One of the objects featured on this week’s episode of The Repair Shop once belonged to Old Member William Gerhardie (1895-1977).

The dictaphone once belonging to Gerhardie was brought onto the programme by the author’s godson. Gerhardie used the equipment in the 1920s and 30s to dictate his books, which were then typed up by his secretary. The experts on the BBC One programme were able to repair the device, enabling Gerhardie’s godson to hear his voice for the first time in half a century.

William Alexander Gerhardie was born in Russia to British parents and educated in St Petersburg before moving to London. He served with the Royal Scots Greys in the First World War, posted at the British Embassy in Petrograd, before serving with the Scots Guards in Siberia for two years from 1918. He awarded an OBE, Imperial Russia’s Order of St Stanislav and the Czechoslovak war cross.

Gerhardie came up to Worcester after his military service, obtaining a BA in Russian in 1922. While an undergraduate, he wrote a book on Chekhov and published his first novel, Futility. Throughout the interwar period, Gerhardie garnered critical acclaim and was one of the most talked about literary figures of his day. Among those who considered him talented were H. G. Wells, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh.

After a period working for the BBC in the 1940s, Gerhardie lived in increasing obscurity. He published no new book, but was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1975. Two years later he died, his name not forgotten thanks to a 1990 biography.

Source: Michael Holroyd, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 

Image credit: William Alexander Gerhardie by Howard Coster (half-plate film negatives, 1929) © National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG x13645 and NPG x13644) CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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