Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Attributed to Flight Lieutenant D. D. R. Owen, Royal Air Force, later Emeritus Professor of French at the University of St Andrews, and an Arthurian scholar

1939-45 Star; Africa Star, 1 clasp, North Africa 1942-43; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, with Air Council enclosure, in Air Ministry card box of issue addressed to F/Lt. D. D. R. Owen, 60 Saxonbury Road, Southbourne, Nr. Bournemouth, Hants, this address crossed out and re-addressed to St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge; together with two sets of card identity tags, nearly extremely fine (4) £100-£140

Professor Douglas David Roy Owen was born on 17 November 1922, at Norton, Suffolk. After wartime service with the Royal Air Force serving as a navigation officer he attended the University of Nottingham briefly before transferring to St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. He completed his Ph.D. in 1955; by that time he was already a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, where he would eventually become a professor of French in 1972. An authority on medieval French and Arthurian studies, over the years he published many books and articles on medieval studies, including ‘The Evolution of the Grail Legend’ in 1968. He retired in 1988.