Victor Knight was born in 1939 in Barking, which was then in Essex and is now in East London. This makes him either an Essex Boy or an Eastender, and an imposter in either category. Barking Public Library provided at least as much of his early education as did Westbury Primary School.His first serious ambition was to be a musician; and he was for a time, a Junior Exhibitioner at the Royal Academy of Music. But instead he found himself at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and obtained a degree in German and Russian. He then held various posts in university libraries - Leeds, Malta, Edinburgh where he obtained a PhD in German, and Liverpool (as Chief Librarian). He derived inside knowledge of the ways of academe at that time. He also visited Indonesia as adviser to the National Library in Jakarta.So much for Dr Jekyll. As Mr Hyde he played the trombone in amateur orchestras and accompanied and conducted amateur operatic societies. Or are Jekyll and Hyde the other way round?
