Robert Blake, Baron Blake

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Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake (December 23, 1916 - September 20, 2003) was an English historian. He is best known for his 1966 biography of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, and for The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, which grew out of his 1968 Ford lecures. He was created a life peer in 1971 as Baron Blake, of Braydeston in the County of Norfolk.

He was educated at Norwich School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a First in Modern Greats (PPE) and a hockey Blue. He served in the Royal Artillery during the war, was taken prisoner in Tobruk in 1942, escaped Italy in 1944 and was mentioned in despatches. He was in MI6 from 1944 to 1946. In 1947 he became Tutor in Politics at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1968 was elected Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford, a post held until retirement in 1987.

Father of crime writer Victoria Blake.

[edit] Partial List of Works

• Unknown Prime Minister; the life and times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923 (1955)
• Disraeli (1966)
• Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (1970) (later revised and updated as Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher, then again as Conservative Party from Peel to Major)
• History of Rhodesia (1978)
• The Decline of power, 1915-1964 (1985) (part of The Paladin History of England series)