Piers Brendon

Piers Brendon (born 21 December 1940, Stratton. Cornwall) is a British writer, known for historical and biographical works. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read History. He earned a Ph.D. degree with his thesis, Hurrell Froude and the Oxford Movement, which was published, with much modification, in 1974.

From 1965–1978, he was Lecturer in History, then Principal Lecturer and Head of Department, at what is now the Anglia Polytechnic University. From 1979 onwards he has worked as a free-lance writer of books, journalism and for television. From 1995 he has been a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge and was Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre from 1995 to 2001, taking over from Correlli Barnett. He was succeeded by Allen Packwood.

Brendon is the godfather of magician's assistant Debbie McGee.

Works

• Hurrell Froude and the Oxford Movement (1974)
• Hawker of Morwenstow - Portrait of a Victorian Eccentric (1975)
• A Quest of the Sangraal, Cornish Ballads & Other Poems (1975; Robert Stephen Hawker, editor)
• Eminent Edwardians (1979; ISBN 0-395-29195-X)
• The Life and Death of the Press Barons (1983)
• Winston Churchill: A Brief Life (1984)
• Ike - the Life and Times of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1986)
• Our Own Dear Queen (1986)
• Thomas Cook - 150 Years of Popular Tourism (1991)
• The Age of Reform 1820–1850 (1994)
• The Motoring Century: Story of the Royal Automobile Club (1997)
• The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (2000; ISBN 0-375-70808-1)
• The Windsors - A Dynasty Revealed 1917–2000 (2000; with Piers Brendon: ISBN 0712667970. Original 1994; ISBN 978-0340610138)
• The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (2007; ISBN 978-0-307-26829-7)

External links

• The Papers of Piers Brendon at Janus website, University of Cambridge