Arthur Stanley Oswald was born on 3 March 1904 in Muswell Hill, London, and educated at Cheltenham School. He matriculated at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1922, and gained the Bell University Scholarship in 1923. He took Part I Classics (First) in 1924 and the English Tripos (First) in 1926.
After gaining his B.A. in 1926, he taught at the Merchant Taylors’ School. After spending a year there he became a Lecturer in English Literature at Bede College, Durham.
His first article was published in ‘Country Life’ in November 1927 and he took up a post with them in April 1928. He tended to write about country houses, as did his colleague Christopher Hussey. He soon developed an interest in the architecture of colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the craftsmen who worked on these buildings. Oswald’s articles appeared in ‘Country Life’ until 1967.
Arthur Oswald’s publications include ‘Country Houses of Kent’ and ‘Country Houses of Dorset’. He also contributed to John Harvey’s ‘English Mediaeval Architects’, in which many of the biographical entries refer to craftsmen involved in the building of King’s College and its Chapel.
He carried out extensive work in the King’s College muniments, with the intention of producing a detailed account of the master masons of King’s College Chapel and what work may be attributed to them. To this end, he wrote the unpublished ‘King’s College Chapel and its Architects’. It is thought this was written before the Second World War, or at least before 1950. Part of the manuscript was used for a paper he wrote on Reginald Ely.
He gained an M.A. in 1948.
Arthur Oswald became a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments for England in 1968 and held this position for a few years. He was elected to the Council of the Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1952. He was made an Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1971.
Arthur Oswald died on 1 March 1979.