| John Ashley Soames Grenville | |
| Birth Date: | 11 January 1928 |
| Birth Place: | Berlin, Germany |
| Death Place: | London |
| Citizenship: | UK |
| Nationality: | British |
| Fields: | History |
| Alma Mater: | London School of Economics |
John Ashley Soames Grenville (11 January 1928 – 7 March 2011) was a historian of the modern world.[1]
John Grenville was born Hans Guhrauer in Berlin, Germany on 11 January 1928. In 1939, he escaped the Holocaust via Kindertransport with his brothers Julian and Walter, leaving his mother to join his father who had already fled to England.[2] He officially changed his name in 1949 to John Ashley Soames Grenville upon receiving British citizenship. The persecution of the Jews progressed faster than his father had anticipated and his mother died in the Riga Ghetto.
His father had limited means to support the family and John attended a boarding school in Essex, followed by attendance at Cambridge Technical School. He then took a gardening job in Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was given access to the library at the college, but only if he promised not to apply there. Thus, he began to study on his own during the day and take classes at Birkbeck College, London in the evening. John was awarded the London County Council Grant, which enabled him to attend the University of London.
He then attended Birkbeck College and the London School of Economics. He studied under Sir Charles Webster and received a First Class Honours Degree in History in 1951 and a PhD, for which he was awarded the Hutchinson Medal, in 1953. His dissertation was entitled Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy: The Close of the 19th Century[3] (1964). He was later a Commonwealth Fund Fellow at Yale University.
John began his academic career at the University of Nottingham where he was an assistant Lecturer and Reader in History. He was Professor of International History at the University of Leeds from 1966 to 1969, then Professor and Head of the Department of Modern History at the University of Birmingham from 1969 to 1994.[4] He later worked at Hamburg University and London's Leo Baeck Institute.
John focused on portraying himself as an Englishman with German roots; thus, most of his studies revolved around this. He developed the international studies degree at Leeds, which focused on the use of film as a tool for understanding history. He lectured at many universities including the University of California and was known for his affable and good natured personality.
John married twice. He met Betty Anne Rosenberg through a Harkness Fellowship at Yale; they had three sons together. However, she died of cancer and left John with three young sons to raise on his own. Not long after he met Patricia Carnie. She had also lost her husband to a heart attack when pregnant and had since had a girl, she named Claire. Understanding each other's loss, they fell in love and married in 1975. John's three sons, George, Edward, and Murray adored Claire whom they quickly accepted as their sister, and shortly after John officially adopted Claire. They had also had a child together who they named Annabelle.
John Grenville died on 7 March in 2011. His final book, based in part on his own experiences, The Jews and Germans of Hamburg: The Destruction of a Civilization 1790-1945, was published shortly after. Patricia, his brother Walter, his sons, George, Edward, and Murray, and his daughters, Claire and Annabelle, survived him.
John A. S. Grenville PhD Studentship in Modern Jewish History and Culture awarded by the Leo Baeck Institute.[5]