Rupert Leo Scott Bruce-Mitford, FBA, FSA (14 June 1914 – 10 March 1994) was a British archaeologist and scholar, best known for his multi-volume publication on the Sutton Hoo ship burial. He was a noted academic as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University from 1978 to 1979, in addition to appointments at All Souls College, Oxford, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Bruce-Mitford worked for the British Museum in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities from 1938 and, following the bequest of the Sutton Hoo Treasure to the nation, was charged with leading the project to study and publish the finds. This he did through four decades at the museum. He also became president of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Apart from military service in the Second World War he worked at the British Museum continuously until 1977, including two keeperships, and finally as a research keeper. Bruce-Mitford also held the titles secretary, and later vice-president, of the Society of Antiquaries, and president of the Society for Medieval Archaeology. He was responsible for translating Danish archaeologist P. V. Glob's book The Bog People (1965) into English. Early life and background Rupert Leo Scott Bruce-Mitford was born on 14 June 1914 at 1 Deerhurst Road, Streatham, London. Following Terence, Vidal and Alaric (Alex), he was the fourth of four sons born to Eustace and Beatrice Jean Bruce-Mitford. Family tradition has it that Rupert's brothers were responsible for his given names, selecting them from their reading: Rupert from Anthony Hope's Rupert of Hentzau, Leo from Rider Haggard's She, and Scott from either Robert Falcon Scott's diary, or his "Message to England". Bruce-Mitford's paternal great-grandparents, George and Elizabeth Beer, sailed to the Godavari River Delta in India to work as missionaries in 1836; their two sons, John William and Charles Henry, continued the calling, while their two daughters married school teachers in the area. In 1866 John Beer married Margaret Anne Midford, the daughter of an English family living in Machilipatnam. They had five children, including in 1871 Herbert Leonard and in 1875 Charles Eustace, Rupert Bruce-Mitford's father. The family returned to Devon in 1884, when John Beer fell ill. He died shortly after arrival; his wife returned to India, but died there four years later. Eustace Beer, Rupert Bruce-Mitford later wrote, was "himself twice orphaned while still a small boy". By 1891 he was in England, having returned, or