MA, MPhil, DPhil, FRHistS
I have been Fellow and Tutor in History at Balliol College, and jointly a Lecturer at Oriel, since 1997; I take Oriel students principally for the three modern British history papers, which span the periods 1685-1830, 1815-1924, and since 1900.
For the Faculty I teach the theme paper on ‘The Making and Unmaking of the British Isles, 1603-present’, and currently supervise postgraduate students pursuing such topics as early Victorian Christian Socialism, the nineteenth-century aristocracy and horse racing, and the politics of Queen Victoria’s queens’ speeches.
I work on nineteenth-century British political and religious history. My book ‘Tractarians and the ‘Condition of England’: the Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement’ was published by Oxford University Press in 2004, and I contributed a number of individual and group entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I am currently working on the private lives of Robert Peel.
I gave the Lee Seng Tee Lecture at Oriel in 2006, and contributed the chapter on nineteenth-century Oriel to the College history (2013).
I have reviewed for the English Historical Review and the London Review of Books, and broadcast on subjects ranging from Queen Victoria (BBC’s Timewatch) and the Oxford Movement (In Our Time) to speedway racing.
For a list of my latest publications, please see my History Faculty page.