Basil Kingsley Martin (28 July 1897 – 16 February 1969) usually known as Kingsley Martin, was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960. Early life He was the son of (David) Basil Martin (1858–1940), a Congregationalist minister, and his wife, Alice Charlotte Turberville, daughter of Thomas Charles Turberville of Islington, born on 28 July 1897 in Ingestre Street, Hereford; Irene Barclay was his elder sister. His father had been minister at the Eign Brook Chapel since 1893; located on Eign Street, Hereford, it is now the Eignbrook United Reformed Church. Basil Martin was a principled socialist and pacifist, and was unpopular in the city. Martin was a day boy at Hereford Cathedral School, where he was unhappy. The family then moved in 1913 to Finchley, London. Basil Martin took up a place at Finchley Unitarian Church, where his pacifism made him somewhat isolated. Martin did not move directly to London. He was first sent on a sea voyage to South Africa, for his health. He stayed with his maternal uncle Frank Turberville on a farm near Grahamstown, now Makhanda, Eastern Cape, returning to his family in January 1914. Conscientious objector Martin then went to Mill Hill School, under its head John Mclure. He entered the Sixth Form: in the "classical sixth" he pursued a traditional course of Latin and Greek. At the outbreak of World War I he was aged 17, and not in the best of health. He did not join the school's Officers' Training Corps (OTC); but his close friend Thomas Applebee, a year older, did, was conscripted, and was killed in 1916 a few days after arriving in France. Taking inspiration from his father's opposition to the Second Anglo-Boer War, which had put him at the risk of violent attack, Martin adopted an attitude of non-resistance and declared himself a conscientious objector. At age 18 he was required to appear before a Conscientious Objectors Tribunal. He presented in evidence a letter from the head of the school OTC, and his father spoke to the tribunal. He was granted exemption from military service. School life was then made intolerable for Martin, however, by the other boys. He decided to joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit. He was sent for initial training to Jordans, Buckinghamshire. He then spent an extended period at the Star and Garter Hospital, Richmond. From January 1917