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Michael Bentley (historian)

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Michael Bentley
Born
Michael John Bentley

(1948-08-12) 12 August 1948 (age 76)
Rotherham, England
Spouses
  • Jane Fisher
    (m. 1970; div. 1994)
  • (m. 2002)
Academic background
Alma mater
InfluencesMaurice Cowling
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
Sub-disciplineLate-modern British political history
School or traditionPeterhouse school[1]
Institutions

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] and is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at St Hugh's College, Oxford.[4] He is the biographer of the historian Herbert Butterfield, a former Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.[5]

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.[6] 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",[7] whilst K. Theodore Hoppen claims the book "provides an interesting (if allusive) study of attitudes".[8]

Personal life

Bentley is married to the historian Sarah Foot.[9]

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. ^ a b 'BENTLEY, Michael (John) 1948-'. encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  3. ^ a b "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. ^ Haslam, Jonathan (15 July 2011). "The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield by Michael Bentley – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
  6. ^ 'Professor Michael Bentley'. St Hugh's College, Oxford. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  7. ^ Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England. 1783–1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 705.
  8. ^ K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation. 1846–1886 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 726.
  9. ^ "Foot, Rev. Canon Prof. Sarah Rosamund Irvine, (born 23 Feb. 1961), Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Oxford, since 2007". Who's Who 2020. Oxford University Press. 1 December 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2021.

Further reading

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