For all but one of the years 1918–45, the geography department at Birkbeck College was ‘guided’ successively by J. F. Unstead and Eva G. R. Taylor. Unstead was appointed lecturer in geography at Birkbeck College in 1909 following George G. Chisholm (at Birkbeck, 1895–1908) and L. W. Lyde (at Birkbeck, 1908–09); the latter lectured at Birkbeck in a part-time capacity while also occupying the chair of geography at University College London, to which he had been appointed in 1903. Shortly after Birkbeck College became a constituent school of the University of London in 1920, Unstead was appointed to the newly created chair of geography tenable at the College. Ten years later, at the early age of fifty-five, he resigned from his post ‘in order’, he has gone on record as saying, ‘to read and think, to travel and write’. He was succeeded by Dr Eva Taylor who was appointed to the chair in open competition. She had studied in Oxford under A. J. Herbertson between 1906 and 1908 for the Certificate of Regional Geography and the Diploma of Geography, both of which she obtained with marks of distinction. She also served from 1908–10 as a research assistant to Herbertson. She used to compile and draw his wall maps for schools and was paid privately by him. She first joined the staff of Birkbeck College in 1921, having previously lectured in a part-time capacity at East London College, later Queen Mary College.