Christopher Hill : The Life of a Radical Historian - Michael Braddick

Christopher Hill

The Life of a Radical Historian

By: Michael Braddick

Hardcover | 15 April 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


$79.25

or 4 interest-free payments of $19.81 with

 or 

Available: 15th April 2025

Preorder. Will ship when available.

A luminous biography of one of the 20th century's most influential historians

Christopher Hill was one of his generation's leading historians. His work fundamentally rewrote our understanding of a pivotal moment in British history: the English Revolution and the development of the modern British state. While his career earned him 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 by that very same establishment. As a member of the Communist Party, Hill was surveilled by the security services for decades, before being publicly accused in the 1980s of having been a Soviet agent during the war.

In this brilliant 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 in 1957. While many of his books - not least the thrilling work of historical resurrection The World Turned Upside Down and his classic biography of Oliver Cromwell, God's Englishman - are still widely read and admired, his intellectual reputation was damaged by sustained partisan criticism in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1980s.

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

More in Historical, Political and Military Biographies

Emperor of the Seas : Kublai Khan and the Making of China - Jack Weatherford
Melania : A Memoir - Melania Trump

RRP $69.99

$49.75

29%
OFF
The Gulag Archipelago : 1918-56 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

RRP $37.99

$33.90

11%
OFF
Churchill : Walking with Destiny - Andrew Roberts

RRP $35.00

$31.75

Bennelong and Phillip : A History Unravelled - Kate Fullagar

RRP $55.00

$39.90

27%
OFF
James Fairfax : Portrait of a collector in eleven objects - Alexander Edward Gilly
Freedom : Memoirs 1954 - 2021 - Angela Merkel

RRP $54.99

$41.50

25%
OFF
Trump : The Art of the Deal - Donald Trump

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Henry V : The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King - Dan Jones
Zero Negativity : The Power of Positive Thinking - Ant Middleton
Night : Penguin Modern Classics - Elie Wiesel

RRP $22.99

$17.75

23%
OFF