Tristram Hunt

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Tristram Hunt (born 31 May 1974) is a British historian, broadcaster and newspaper columnist. He also lectures on Modern British History at Queen Mary, University of London.^[1]

Tristram Hunt read history at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Chicago, and was for a time an Associate Fellow of the Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge. Hunt has made many appearances on television. He presented a four-part series on the English Civil War in 2002 and wrote an essay in the New Statesman entitled "Britain's Very Own Taliban", comparing Cromwell's Republic to the Islamic fundamentalism dominant in Afghanistan at that time.^[2] Hunt presented a programme advocating the theories of Isaac Newton in the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons poll. He also presented a one-hour documentary on the rise of the middle class for Channel 4 last year. He makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4, having presented broadcasts on such topics as the history of the signature. Hunt is an active New Labour supporter and Trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund and has a column with UK Sunday paper, The Observer. Hunt was an intern at the think tank Demos, was a fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research and is on the board of the New Local Government Network (2004).

Hunt's main area of expertise is urban history, specifically during the Victorian era, and it is this subject which provided him with his second book, Building Jerusalem^[3] This book, covering such notable Victorian minds as John Ruskin, Joseph Chamberlain and Thomas Carlyle received many favourable reviews, but some criticism, notably a scathing review in the Times Literary Supplement by J. Mordaunt Crook ('The Future was Bromley', TLS, 13 August 2004). In 2006, Hunt wrote Making our Mark a publication celebrating CPRE's eightieth anniversary. He then completed a BBC series entitled The Protestant Revolution, examining the influence of Protestantism on British and international attitudes to work and leisure for broadcast on BBC Four.[3]

In the summer of 2007 he failed to be selected for the safe Labour seat of Liverpool West Derby. The successful candidate was Stephen Twigg ^[4].

His most recent project was to write a biography of Karl Marx's friend and literary collaborator Friedrich Engels. Entitled The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, the book was published in May 2009. ^[5] The book included original research from German and Russian libraries and includes an account Hunt's own trip to Engels,_Russia, a Russian town near Saratov.

His PhD, Civic thought in Britain, c.1820- c.1860 was taken at Cambridge and was awarded in 2000.^[6] Before this, Hunt worked for the Labour Party at Millbank Tower in the 1997 general election and also worked at the Party's headquarters during the following 2001 general election.

Hunt, the son of Lord Hunt of Chesterton, is married with one son and lives in Haringey. His brother-in-law is Giles Foden old Africa hand and author.

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