[1] His Communist Party membership led him not to be commissioned, and he spent the period guarding a bomb-disposal dump at Acaster Malbis.
[1] During Walsh's student years, he was an active member of the Communist Party, recruited to a large degree through the efforts of Arnold Kettle, who was variously his teacher, landlord, and friend.
[3]: 182–83 His friendship with Kettle appears not to have survived, and he continued to express regrets about Communist Party membership into the twenty-first century.
[1] His research on "The University Movement in the North of England at the End of the Nineteenth Century" was published posthumously.
[4] Walsh married his fellow English student Mary McGrail in 1953; they divorced in 1962, with a Decree Absolute being granted in 1964, shortly before he met the woman who was to become his second wife.