Horace Gundry Alexander was born on 18 April 1889 in
Croydon,
Surrey. His father, Joseph Gundry Alexander (1848–1918), was an eminent lawyer, who had worked to suppress the
opium trade between India and China. His mother was Josephine Crosfield Alexander (1847-1917). His early schooling was at
Bootham School in
York, after which he studied history at
King's College, Cambridge and graduated in 1912. When the
First World War broke out in 1914, he served as secretary on various anti-war committees. In 1916, as a
conscientious objector, he was initially exempted only from combatant
military service, but after two levels of appeal he was exempted on condition of teaching, which he took up via General Service with the
Friends' Ambulance Unit, holding posts at
Sibford School,
Warwick School and
Cranbrook School, Kent. Alexander married Olive Graham (1892–1942) on 20 July 1918 and joined the staff of
Woodbrooke, a Quaker college in
Birmingham, teaching international relations, especially in relation to the
League of Nations, from 1919 to 1944. His wife died in 1942, having used a wheelchair for several years. That year Alexander joined a section of the
World War II Friends Ambulance Unit and went to parts of India that were threatened by Japan. In 1958, he married Rebecca Bradbeer (née Biddle, 1901–1991), an American Quaker. After ten years they moved to
Pennsylvania, United States, where he spent the remaining twenty years of his life. He was also, for its first ten years, a governor of
Leighton Park School, a leading Quaker school in England. He died of a
gastrointestinal illness at Crosslands, a Quaker retirement community in
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. ==Ornithology==