Anyone familiar with Sir Keith’s previous work will know to expect a tour de force of the historical imagination supported by wide and very deep reading in a multitude of primary sources—official and unofficial, proscriptive and descriptive, elite and, where available, nonelite, contemporary and modern. The scholar will delight in the breadth of quotation, the general reader in a fascinating story well told.
Keith Thomas
Sir Keith Thomas was born in 1933 and educated at Barry County Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He has spent all his academic career in Oxford, as a senior scholar of St. Antony’s (1955), a Prize Fellow of All Souls (1955-57), Fellow and Tutor of St John’s (1957-85), Reader (1978-85), ad hominem Professor (1986) and President of Corpus Christi (1986-2000). He returned to All Souls as a Distinguished Fellow (2001-15). He is now an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, Balliol, Corpus Christi and St John’s. Elected FBA in 1979, he was President of the British Academy (1993-97). He is a member of the Academia Europaea, a Founding Member of the Learned Society of Wales, a Foreign Hon. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Hon. Member of the Japan Academy. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Stanford, Columbia and Louisiana State Universities. In 2020, he was appointed a Companion of Honour for services to the study of History. He has published essays on many different aspects of the social and cultural history of early modern England. His books include Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), Man and the Natural World (1983), The Oxford Book of Work (1999) and The Ends of Life (2009).
