Michael_Bentley_(historian)

Michael Bentley (historian)

Michael Bentley (historian)

English historian (born 1948)


Michael John Bentley FRHistS (born 12 August 1948)[2] is an English historian of British politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews.[3]

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Early life and career

Bentley was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, in 1948, the son of Peter and Jessie Bentley. He attended the University of Sheffield, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1969, before proceeding to postgraduate study at St John's College, Cambridge.[2]

From 1977 to 1995 Bentley taught history at Sheffield. He then moved to the University of St Andrews, where he was appointed Professor of Modern History; he is now Emeritus. As of 2021, he is Senior Research Fellow and Stipendiary Lecturer in History at St Hugh's College, Oxford.[4] In 2011 he was made a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.[3]

Critical reaction

Boyd Hilton has called Bentley's Politics Without Democracy 1815–1914 "a wonderfully 'inside' account of life at the top",[5] whilst K. Theodore Hoppen claims the book "provides an interesting (if allusive) study of attitudes".[6]

Personal life

Bentley is married to the historian Sarah Foot.[7]

Works

  • The Liberal Mind, 1914–1929 (1977)
  • High and Low Politics in Modern Britain: Ten Studies (edited, with John Stevenson; 1983).
  • Politics Without Democracy, 1815–1914 (1984, 1996)
  • The Climax of Liberal Politics (1987)
  • Companion to Historiography (1997)
  • Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1998)
  • Lord Salisbury's World (2001)
  • Modernizing England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870–1970 (The Wiles Lectures) (2006)
  • The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield: History, Science and God (2011)

References

  1. Reba Soffer (2008). History, Historians, and Conservatism in Britain and America: The Great War to Thatcher and Reagan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-19-920811-1.
  2. 'BENTLEY, Michael (John) 1948-'. encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  3. "Michael John Bentley". University of St Andrews - Research at St Andrews. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  4. 'Professor Michael Bentley'. St Hugh's College, Oxford. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  5. Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England. 1783–1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 705.
  6. K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation. 1846–1886 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 726.

Further reading

  • Middleton, Alex. "'High Politics' and Its Intellectual Contexts." Parliamentary History 40.1 (2021): 168–191. online



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