The history of a history man, or, The twentieth century viewed from a safe distance : the memoirs of Patrick Collinson / Patrick Collinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Collinson, Patrick

Contributor:

Yarnall Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Church of England Record Society (Series)

Church of England Record Society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Collinson, Patrick.

Historians--Great Britain--Biography.

Historians.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 214 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm.

Other Title:

Twentieth century viewed from a safe distance

Memoirs of Patrick Collinson

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk : Boydell Press, 2011.

Summary:

In 1988 Patrick Collinson was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge; on his retirement in 1996, he was widely regarded as the most distinguished religious historian of his generation. An expert on the Reformation and post Reformation period in England, he is probably best known for his work on the history of Puritanism.

The History of a History Man thus has much to tell about the development of the historical profession and the evolution of the universities in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. But it is much more than an academic memoir. Elegantly written and punctuated with an unexpectedly irreverent humour, it tells the story of a childhood in pre-War Britain dominated by an ardent evangelical religion, of evacuation during the Blitz, of National Service in the RAF, of undergraduate life at Cambridge in the 1950s, of teaching and travelling in the Sudan and Ethiopia while the British empire collapsed, and of expatriate life in Australia during the 1970s, before returning to the University of Kent in time for the first great funding crisis of post-War higher education.

Collinson has been a great traveller as well as a distinguished academic, and this fascinating memoir is packed with acute insights into places as well as people. It not only demands the attention of those interested in the writing of history and the story of the universities, but also, in its evocation of a world that is now rapidly disappearing, it has much to offer anyone who wants to learn more about Britain in the twentieth century. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 My Mother 5

2 My Father 14

3 A Strange Little Boy 22

4 King's School Ely 38

5 History 49

6 My Part in The Cold War 56

7 Pembroke 62

8 Puritanism 75

9 First Taste of the Waters of the Nile 89

10 The Sudan Years and Ethiopia 100

11 The Most Beautiful Place on Earth 114

12 It was all down to the Khartoum Caledonian Society 122

13 King's College London and Honor Oak, 1961-1969 139

14 Sydney 150

15 Canterbury and Sheffield 165

16 Trinity 179

17 The Glacis of Retirement 193.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781843836278

1843836270

OCLC:

663952870