[1] Walter Airey's death left his widow, Margaret, struggling to raise seven children.
[2] At Merton he studied history for the first time since Auckland Grammar, in an attempt to understand war and its causes and impacts.
[1] Airey met Isobel Lilian Chadwick before leaving for Oxford, and married her in 1925 after he had returned to New Zealand.
[1] Airey may be best known for his revisions of John B. Condliffe's Short History of New Zealand, which went into nine editions and was a standard school text until the 1960s.
He admired the Soviet Union and was interested in Marxism, but did not join the New Zealand Communist Party.