CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Ralph G. Foster

British bowls player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ7287519 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ralph Gordon Foster (25 May 1935 – 3 May 2021) was a British athlete and Paralympic Games gold medal winner. After an accident in his late twenties left him a paraplegic he eventually became involved in disabled sports. He was a swimmer, snooker player and lawn bowler. Foster represented Great Britain in lawn bowling at the 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul and won a gold medal. He died after a long illness at his home in Nottingham, on 3 May 2021, at the age of 85.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Ralph G. Foster” as british bowls player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ralph, Foster and British.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1935, 2021, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1934-05-25. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Ralph, Foster and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Ralph G. Foster”, the useful work is to connect “british bowls player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7287519. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2021 and 1988.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ralph G. Foster”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ralph G. Foster primary sources, Ralph G. Foster archive and Ralph research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ralph G. Foster”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ralph G. Foster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.