Michael Bentley (historian) explained

Michael Bentley
Birth Name:	Michael John Bentley
Birth Date:	12 August 1948
Birth Place:	Rotherham, England
School Tradition:	Peterhouse school^[1]
Influences:	Maurice Cowling
Discipline:	History
Sub Discipline:	Late-modern British political history

Michael John Bentley (born 12 August 1948)^[2] is an English historian of British politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews^[3] and is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at St Hugh's College, Oxford.^[4] He is the biographer of the historian Herbert Butterfield, a former Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.^[5]

Early life and career

Bentley was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, in 1948, the son of Peter and Jessie Bentley. He attended the University of Sheffield, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1969, before proceeding to postgraduate study at St John's College, Cambridge.^[2]

From 1977 to 1995 Bentley taught history at Sheffield. He then moved to the University of St Andrews, where he was appointed Professor of Modern History; he is now Emeritus. As of 2021, he is Senior Research Fellow and Stipendiary Lecturer in History at St Hugh's College, Oxford.^[6] In 2011 he was made a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.^[3]

Critical reaction

Boyd Hilton has called Bentley's Politics Without Democracy 1815–1914 "a wonderfully 'inside' account of life at the top",^[7] whilst K. Theodore Hoppen claims the book "provides an interesting (if allusive) study of attitudes".^[8]

Personal life

Bentley is married to the historian Sarah Foot.^[9]

Works

• The Liberal Mind, 1914–1929 (1977)
• High and Low Politics in Modern Britain: Ten Studies (edited, with John Stevenson; 1983).
• Politics Without Democracy, 1815–1914 (1984, 1996)
• The Climax of Liberal Politics (1987)
• Companion to Historiography (1997)
• Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1998)
• Lord Salisbury's World (2001)
• Modernizing England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870–1970 (The Wiles Lectures) (2006)
• The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield: History, Science and God (2011)

Further reading

• Middleton, Alex. "'High Politics' and Its Intellectual Contexts." Parliamentary History 40.1 (2021): 168–191. online

Notes and References

1. Book: Reba Soffer . Reba Soffer . 2008 . History, Historians, and Conservatism in Britain and America: The Great War to Thatcher and Reagan . Oxford . Oxford University Press . 181 . 978-0-19-920811-1.
2. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/bentley-michael-john-1948 'BENTLEY, Michael (John) 1948-'
3. Web site: Michael John Bentley . University of St Andrews - Research at St Andrews . 7 May 2016.
4. https://www.st-hughs.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-michael-bentley/ 'Professor Michael Bentley'
5. News: Haslam . Jonathan . 2011-07-15 . The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield by Michael Bentley – review . 2024-05-19 . The Guardian . en-GB . 0261-3077.
6. https://www.st-hughs.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-michael-bentley/ 'Professor Michael Bentley'
7. Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England. 1783–1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 705.
8. K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation. 1846–1886 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 726.
9. Web site: Foot, Rev. Canon Prof. Sarah Rosamund Irvine, (born 23 Feb. 1961), Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Oxford, since 2007 . . Oxford University Press . 2 April 2021 . en . 1 December 2019.