Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian

A luminous biography of one of the last century’s most influential historians

Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than fifteen books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote the way we understand the English Revolution and the development of the modern British state. While his career brought many of the trappings of establishment respectability -- he was both a Fellow of the British Academy and the Master of Balliol College, Oxford -- he was also seen as a threat to that very same establishment. Under surveillance by the security services for decades, in the 1980s Hill was publicly accused of having been a Soviet agent during the war. His was a Cold War life, as well as a scholarly one.

In this brilliant work of biography, Michael Braddick charts Hill’s development from his abandonment of the respectable, provincial Methodism of his youth, through his embrace of Marxism, to his membership and eventual break with the Communist Party, as well as his celebrated intellectual career. While many of his books -- not least the thrilling work of historical resurrection The World Turned Upside Down and God’s Englishman, his classic biography of Oliver Cromwell -- are still widely read and admired, his intellectual reputation was damaged by sustained academic criticism in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1980s.

Braddick’s judicious biography not only situates Hill’s life and work in their historical context but seeks to rescue Hill for a new generation of readers.

Michael Braddick is Professor of History at the University of Sheffield, and has held academic positions and visiting Fellowships in the USA, Australia, France, and Germany. He has written extensively on the social, economic and political life of early modern England, Britain and the Atlantic, particularly in relation to state formation, popular politics and the English revolution. His books include The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution, God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars, and A Useful History of Britain: The Politics of Getting Things Done.