Personal Biography
Born 1937, prep school Alcuin House School, Stanmore 1942-50, Merchant Taylors’ School Northwood 1950-55. 2nd Lt. Royal Signals (Malta Signals Squadron) 1955-7. Modern History St.John’s College Oxford 1958-61, BA first class 1961, Hon.Fellow 2010. Senior scholarship St.Antony’s College Oxford 1961-4. Junior Research Fellow Nuffield College 1964-7. Oxford D.Phil. 1966. Married Vicky Greggain 1967. Fellow and Tutor in history and politics, Corpus 1967-2000: Senior Tutor 1984-6, 1988-90; Vice-President 1992, 1993, 1996-8; Official Fellow 2000-4 while general editor of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 vols. 2004). Emeritus Fellow Corpus since 2004. FBA 2005, knighted ‘for services to scholarship’ 2005.
Research
Throughout my adult life I have been fortunate enough to be paid for doing what I would have wanted to do anyway: writing and reading about modern and contemporary British history has become a lifetime’s hobby. Fine history teachers at Merchant Taylors’ School and fine history tutors at St.John’s College Oxford prepared me for a lifetime’s devotion to modern and contemporary British history as an academic subject, overflowing into to an amateur study of politics and sociology. My D.Phil. thesis led to my first book, Drink and the Victorians, and in my research since then I have moved steadily forward from 1815 to the present, publishing books as I went along, and editing vol.8 [1914-70, with epilogue] of The History of the University of Oxford. Modern Oxford (1994).
Selected Publications
Drink and the Victorians. The Temperance Question in England 1815‑1872 (1971, 2nd ed. 1994)
Separate Spheres. The Opposition to Women’s Suffrage in Britain (1978)
The Transformation of British Politics 1860-1995 (1996)
Seeking a Role. The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (2009)
Finding a Role? The United Kingdom 1970-1990 (2010, revised paperback ed., 2011)