Kenneth de Burgh Codrington
Kenneth de Burgh Codrington (5 June 1899 – 1 January 1986) was a British archaeologist and art historian of India who was Keeper of the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum (1935–1948) and Professor of Indian Archaeology at the University of London (1948–1966). Background. Born in India on 5 June 1899, Codrington grew up in the North-West Frontier. He was educated at Sherbane School and Cadet College, Wellington, India; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; and Wadham College, Oxford. He joined the Indian Army in 1917, but was invalided in 1921. He married Elizabeth Gill in  1921, and after divorce, married Philippa Christine in 1927. He then turned to an academic career. He died on 1 January 1986. Academic and archaeological career. Codrington earned a BA in 1921 and an MA in 1926. He was Professor of Archaeology and Fellow of the Graduate School at the University of Cincinnati 1925–26. From 1931, he was an Honorary Lecturer at University College and S.O.A.S. in the University of London, and from 1948 he was Professor of Indian Archaeology until his retirement in 1966. From 1935 to 1948 he was also Keeper of the Indian Section of the Victoria  and Albert Museum. He was on an archaeological mission in Afghanistan between 1940 and 1942 (also working for British intelligence), and was at the excavations led by Joseph Hackin in Begram in 1940. In 1972 Codrington directed the excavations at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. Furniture controversy. In the mid-1930s he was involved in a heated controversy, denying the claim that much 17th-century furniture hitherto regarded as Dutch or English was in fact made in India. This position was given in papers by the Danish curator Poul Fritz Vilhelm Slomann in "The Burlington Magazine": "The Indian Period of European Furniture-I