Born in China to Missionary parents who subsequently returned to the UK, Philip Beale grew up in Yorkshire and received his advanced education at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read history, graduating in 1946.
Beale and his wife had a strong and enduring Christian Faith and were regular attendees at their local Methodist Church wherever they lived during their marriage.
While there he jointly organised an archaeological expedition to examine the Senegambian stone circles,[2] the records of which are in the Royal Anthropological Institute as MS 465.
His The Postal Service of Sierra Leone: Its history, stamps and stationery until 1961, published by the Royal society in 1988, was described as a "work of distinguished historical scholarship".
[5] Philip Beale was a committed Christian and Methodist Lay Preacher and was happily married to his wife, Barbara from 1951 until her death, in January 2019.