Raleigh Lectures on History

In 1918 (the tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh’s death), Sir Charles Wakefield offered the Academy a sum to form the nucleus of a ‘Raleigh Fund for History’, to support scholarly research and publication. One fruit of the endowment was the foundation of the Raleigh Lecture on History. The series rotates between medieval, early modern, and modern topics. The lecture was first delivered in 1919.

List of Raleigh Lectures on History delivered since 1950.

2023 Writing the History of Early Modern European Homosexuality, by Sir Noel Malcolm (video | event information)

2022 Towards a History of Compromise: Comparing Political Unions in the British-Irish Isles and Poland-Lithuania, by Robert Frost (text | video)  

2019 Brexit 1204: the consequences of King John’s loss of Normandy, by Nicholas Vincent (event information | audio)

2018 Radical physics: science, socialism and the paranormal at Birkbeck College in the 1970s, Joanna Bourke (text | audio)

2017 The Scottish Enlightenment and the matter of Troy, by Colin Kidd (text | audio)

2016 Stages of papal law, 385-1917, by David d’Avray (text | audio)

2015 Out of the ashes: Europe’s rebirth after the Second World War, 1945-1949, by Ian Kershaw (text | video)

2014 Rivers of blood: Illustrating violence and virtue in Russia’s early modern empire, Valerie Kivelson (text | video)

2013 Charlemagne and Europe, by Jinty Nelson (text | video)

2012 The making and breaking of states: The end of empire in India revisited, by Judith M Brown (text | audio)

2011 A Protestant or Catholic Atlantic World? Confessional Divisions and the Writing of Natural History, by Nicholas Canny (text | audio)

2010 Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c.700-1200), by Julia M H Smith (text | summary)

2009 The History of Romantic Love in Sub-Saharan Africa: between Interest and Emotion, by Megan Vaughan (text | audio)

2008 Deities, Devils, and Dams: Elizabeth I, Dover Harbour and the Family of Love, by David Wootton (text)

2007 Byzantium and the Limits of Orthodoxy, by Averil Cameron (text)

2006 Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany, by Richard J Evans (text | audio)

2005 Mutualities and Obligations: Changing Social Relationships in Early Modern England, by Keith Wrightson (text)

2004 The Inquisition and the Renaissance, by Alexander Murray (text)

2003 ‘The Nation Within’: British India at War 1939-1947, by C A Bayly (text | audio)

2002 ‘This Small Island’: Britain, Size and Empire, by Linda Colley (text)

2001 Prosperity and Power in the Age of Bede and Beowulf, by J R Maddicott (text)

2000 White Masculinity: Jan Smuts, Race and the South African War, by Shula Marks (text)

1999 Thomas Carlyle and Oliver Cromwell, by Blair Worden (text)

1998 Reflections on Paganism and Christianity in Medieval Europe, by Robert Bartlett (text)

1997 Beyond Class? Social Structures and Social Perceptions in Modern England, by David Cannadine (text)

1996 Politics and Manners from Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel, by Paul Langford (text)

1995 Maitland and Anglo-Saxon Law: Beyond Domesday Book, by Patrick Wormald (text)

1994 From Confederation to Compromise: The Austrian Experiment, 1849–1867, by R J W Evans (text)

1993 The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity, by Patrick Collinson (text)

1992 The Problem of Christianization, by P R L Brown (text)

1991 The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View, by James Campbell (text)

1990 The Highlands and the Roots of Green Consciousness, 1750–1990, by T C Smout (text)

1989 Raleigh’s Country and the Sea, by Joyce Youings (text)

1988 From Paris to the Paraclete: The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, by David Luscombe (text)

1987 ‘We Must Hope for the Best and Prepare for the Worst’: The Prime Minister, the Cabinet and Hitler’s Germany, 1937–1939, by David Dilks (text)

1986 Ambrogio Lorenzetti: The Artist as Political Philosopher, by Quentin Skinner (text)

1985 Aula Renovata: The Carolingian Court before the Aachen Palace, by Donald Bullough (text)

1984 Core and Periphery in Modern British History, by Keith Robbins (text)

1983 The Crisis of Medieval Germany, by Karl Leyser (text)

1982 The Isthmus Repaired: The Resurgence of the English Aristocracy, 1660–1760, by John Cannon (text)

1981 Italy, Mount Athos, and Muscovy: The Three Worlds of Maximos the Greek (c.1470–1556), by Dimitri Obolensky (text)

1980 Racial Aspects of the Far Eastern War of 1941–1945, by Christopher Thorne (text)

1979 The Professions and Social Change in England, 1680–1730, by Geoffrey Holmes (text)

1978 A Carolingian Renaissance Prince: The Emperor Charles the Bald, by J M Wallace-Hadrill (text)

1977 Gladstone and Ireland, by John Vincent (text)

1976 Age and Authority in Early Modern England, by Keith Thomas (text)

1975 The End of the Anglo-Norman Realm, by J C Holt (text)

1974 Modern French History in Britain, by R C Cobb (text)

1973 Some Reflections of a Medieval Criminologist, by Ralph B Pugh (text)

1972 The Discovery of America and the Discovery of Man, by J H Elliott (text)

1971 Sincerity and Insincerity in Charles James Fox, by Herbert Butterfield (text)

1970 The Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, by J N L Myres (text)

1969 Japan and the West in the Mid Nineteenth Century: Nationalism and the Origins of the Modern State, by W G Beasley (text)

1968 Reform by Statute: Thomas Starkey’s Dialogue and Thomas Cromwell’s Policy, by G R Elton (text)

1967 Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War, by Alan Bullock (text)

1966 John Wyclif: The Path to Dissent, by Gordon Leff (text)

1965 British Merchants and South American Independence, by R A Humphreys (text)

1964 The Wars of the Roses, by K B McFarlane (text)

1963 The Russian Revolution and the Peasant, by E H Carr (text)

1962 The Place of Henry I in English History, by R W Southern (text)

1961 The Colour Question in the Portuguese Empire, by C R Boxer (text)

1960 The City of London and the Devonshire-Pitt Administration, 1756-7, by Lucy S Sutherland (text)

1959 Politics in the First World War, by A J P Taylor

1958 King John and the Courts of Justice, by Doris M Stenton

1957 Sir Richard Grenville’s Place in English History, by A L Rowse

1956 The Normans and the Welsh March, by J G Edwards

1955 Changes in Standards of Comfort in Eighteenth-century England, by T S Ashton

1954 The Personal Role of Simon de Montfort in the Period of Baronial Reform and Rebellion, 1258-65, by R F Treharne

1953 Greek and Macedonian Kingship, by F E Adcock

1952 The Cabinet Council, 1783-1835, by A Aspinall

1951 Reynold Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, by E F Jacob

1950 Some Considerations on the Present State of Historical Studies, by E L Woodward 

. . .

1919 World History, by James Bryce (text)

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