Sir Henry Clifford Darby CBE FBA (7 February 1909 – 14 April 1992),[1] commonly known as Sir Clifford Darby, was a Welsh historical geographer and academic.
Born in Resolven in south Wales on 7 February 1909, he was the son of an engineer and attended the Neath County School before going up to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, on a scholarship; after initially reading English, he switched to geography and graduated with firsts in parts one and two of the Tripos.
During the Second World War, Darby was also commissioned as an officer in the Intelligence Corps before taking charge of the Admiralty's Geographical Handbook Centre in 1941.
[2] As one obituary noted, "Clifford Darby was a towering figure in British geography over a period straddling sixty years during the middle decades of [the 20th] century, and in the first rank of scholars in the country".
As well as receiving a number of honorary doctorates and academic awards, he was appointed a CBE in 1988 and knighted three years later.