John Vincent (historian)

John Russell Vincent (born 20 December 1937) is a British historian and a former Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was Professor of Modern History, and later History, at the University of Bristol from 1970 until his retirement when he became Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia. In the 1980s he was a controversial columnist for The Times and The Sun newspapers for four years, until students from the University of Bristol disrupted some of his lectures at his university and forced him to take two terms unpaid leave. He continued his journalism and has also written for many other publications, including book reviews and articles for New Society, The New Statesman, the Listener, The Spectator, The London Review of Books, the Observer, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian.^[1]

In 1995, Oxford University Press refused at the last minute to publish a book on history by Vincent, having commissioned and overseen much of its writing.^[2]

In his book on historiography, An Intelligent Person's Guide to History, Vincent notes that if we went solely by the documentary standards most prized by modern historians nothing would be more historically certain than the existence of actual witches in the Middle Ages, given the large volume of solemnly-sworn testimony available in original documents.

Publications

• John Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–68 (Constable, 1966; second edition, 1980).
• Vincent, John (1967). Pollbooks: How Victorians Voted. Cambridge University Press.
• Vincent, John; Cooke (eds.), A. B. (1971). Lord Carlingford's Journal. Oxford University Press.
• Vincent, John; Stenton (eds.), M. (1971). McCalmont's Parliamentary Poll Book 1832–1918. Harvester.
• Cooke, Alistair Basil; Vincent, John (1974). Governing Passion: Cabinet Government and Party Politics in Britain, 1885–86. Harvester.
• Vincent (ed.), John (1978). Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: The Political Journals of Lord Stanley 1849–69. Harvester.
• Vincent, John (1979). Gladstone and Ireland. Raleigh Lecture. British Academy.
• Vincent (ed.), John (1984). The Crawford Papers: The Journals of David Lindsay, Twenty-Seventh Earl of Crawford and Tenth Earl of Balcarres during the years 1892 to 1940. Manchester University Press.
• Vincent, John (1987). The Thatcher Governments, 1979–1987' in Peter Hennessy and Anthony Seldon (eds.), Ruling Performance: British Government from Attlee to Thatcher. Blackwell.
• Vincent, John (1990). Disraeli. Oxford Paperbacks.
• Vincent, John (2005). An Intelligent Person's Guide to History. Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd.
• Vincent (ed.), John (1995). The Derby Diaries 1869–1878. Cambridge University Press.
• Vincent, John (1996). 1874–1880' in Anthony Seldon (ed.), How Tory Governments Fall. Fontana Press. pp. 159–187.
• John Vincent (ed.), The Derby Diaries 1878–1893 (Leopard's Head Press, 2003).

References

1. "Author's response to his critics". Retrieved 1 April 2008.
2. "Historian falls foul of politically correct lobby". Archived from the original on 30 June 2012. Retrieved 1 April 2008.