Lawrence Burd
Lawrence Arthur Burd (also spelled Laurence) FRHistS FRPSL (1 June 1863 – 12 April 1931) was a British schoolmaster, an expert on Machiavelli, and a noted stamp-collector. He studied at Clifton College and Balliol College, Oxford, earning a BA in 1885 and an MA in 1888. After a year as a tutor to Lord Acton's son, he joined Repton School in 1886 and taught there until his retirement in 1923, becoming the Classical Sixth Form master. He built up Repton's library from scratch, making it one of the best in the country, and the library building is now known as the Burd Library.
Burd was a dedicated historian and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He edited a new edition of Machiavelli's The Prince in 1891, which The English Historical Review praised highly. He wrote the chapter "Florence and Machiavelli" for Acton's The Cambridge Modern History (1902).
The Times obituary noted his many hobbies, including fishing, cello, stamp collecting, cycling, and portrait photography. In philately, he specialized in early Great Britain, especially pre-adhesive stamps, and was an early student of plating, helping to plate the Penny Black. In 1922 he described the work as visionary yet painstaking. He owned about 8,000 Penny Blacks, which he sold to the dealer Charles Nissen in 1919. He joined the Royal Philatelic Society London in 1918 and signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1924.
Burd died at The Pastures, Repton, on 12 April 1931, aged 67. He was survived by his wife and two children.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:23 (CET).