Talk:Andrew Roberts (historian)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Science and academia work group.


Contents

[edit] Notability

A complete nonentity. This shouldn't be in Wikipedia. Anonymous User 66.248.97.105

He has written ten books, presented a tv series, appeared on numerous current affairs shows and has articles published in the national press on a weekly basis. What more must the man do? Boddah 00:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

He isnt a historian. There is no research in his books. They are based on secondary sources.

Actually, if I recall correctly he did a lot of primary research for his biographies of Halifax and Salisbury. Yes, he is not an academic historian, he is one of those pop-historians, however a very prominent one whose work has earned him two prizes and praise from historians such as Michael Burghleigh, Richard Overy, Niall Ferguson, Saul David, David Chandler and Lawrence James. Just because he relies a lot on secondary sources doesn't make him a poor historian. Simon Schama relies on secondary source heavily as well. Is he also not an historian?

[edit] Virtual History ISBN

I couldn't find an ISBN similar to 10987654321 anywhere for this book. I added the ISBN for the first London edition.

[edit] Anti War?

I'm pretty sure he appeared on Newsnight in the run up to the Iraq War and was strongly in favour of the war, saying that weapon inspections were pointless. He had an argument with Mary Warnock over the rights and wrongs of invasion and accused those against the war of being the same as pre-WW2 appeasers. I don't know where the assertion about him being against the war comes from. 217.196.239.189 18:13, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Youthful misdemeanours

The list of pranks for which he was expelled from Cranleigh goes beyond what's found in the reference (which mentions only chapel roof climbing). Anyone want to provide a source for his statue painting and lavatory clingfilming? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gareth McCaughan (talk • contribs) 22:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC). Oops, yes, it was. Sorry about that. Gareth McCaughan 01:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reported Inaccuracies

Should reports about inaccuracies in "A History" be noted? For example http://www.slate.com/id/2162837?nav=tap3

Nothing has been noted about his support for the "whiteman's burden" of imperialism for both the UK and the new American Empire. There is a reason he is Bush's favorite historian. Seen TNR - White Man For the Job. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=rgEIzSVsAzw1JcO3DnkA6i%3D%3D

Good point. Read the article and added some text and a reference. MOXFYRE (contrib) 01:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reported Irrelevancies

Do we really need to know which football team the blighter supports? Is it essential to record which car he drove at Cambridge? More criticism of his book (or at least a summary of what passes for its argument)would not go amiss, and less dreary dwelling on his personal eccentricities. Also, can someone confirm that he is still an honorary scholar at Gonville and Caius, Cambridge? I have never come across the man in the History faculty, and there is no reference to him on the Caius website.

Also - and it pains me to raise this topic again - Roberts is a writer of history, but is he really a historian? His highest academic accolade (that is not from Missoura) is an honours degree. That hardly makes him an academic historian.

He isnt a historian. He writes and comments about history. He doesnt hold an academic position. His writing is not based on primary historical research.

Actually his highest accolade is the two awards for his biography on Salisbury.

  • A little unfair - I don't have much time for the man either (his recent books read like prep school history essays), but I don't think anyone has suggested his books are unscholarly trash, whether they agree with his views or not. His early book on Halifax was pretty decent as well. And doesn't sneering at him like that come across as sour grapes at a man who presumably makes a tidy living writing history for the general reader? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.192.0.10 (talk) 10:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Constant Removal of Material

Some individual, or individuals, possibly even Andrew Roberts himself, is clearly intent on removing sourced, factual information on this article if it is deemed to show Roberts in a bad light. It is a fact of reality that Roberts adressed the racist, pro-Apartheid Springbok Club, regardless of whatever he claims he knew about the club beforehand, and that he has been accused of making arguments in favour of genocide. These may be uncomfortable facts that Roberts and his friends would rather not have brought to attention but this is Wikipedia, not Hagiography Central. By any stretch this information is notable, and it is presented in neutral, unbiased language. The constant removal of this information is obviously a concerted attempt by some of Roberts' like-minded fans, or perhaps some associates or even the man himself, to keep unpleasant and/or embarrassing facts about the man off Wikipedia. It's been removed and put back dozens of times now, it happens at least every couple of weeks and it's outrageous to just keep removing factual material because it might show the subject in a bad light. In fact, it's vandalism. It should stop, or the article should get protected. And if it is actually Roberts himself trying to whitewash his own biography, maybe he should think twice in future unless he wants to make a very embarrassing appearance in the 'Wikipedia Whispers' section of Private Eye magazine and draw a great deal more attention to these episodes and the efforts to write them out of history. 217.38.66.40 19:57, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BLP issues

I removed that two blocks of text that contained poorly sourced controversial information (see this diff). One was sourced to an article at The New Republic that does not exist. The other was, incredibly, sourced to Private Eye. CIreland (talk) 15:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation

I disagree with the use of the Andrew Roberts page as a disambiguation article as the vast majority of people searching for "Andrew Roberts" are going to be looking for the historian rather than a hedge fund businessman, the article for which is currently nominated for deletion. If that article survives the link to it should appear at the top of the historian's article with a See also tag rather than a disambiguation page at "Andrew Roberts".--Johnbull (talk) 22:02, 5 May 2008 (UTC)