Hugh Thomas

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For other uses, see Hugh Thomas (disambiguation).

Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton (born October 21, 1931 in Windsor), is a British historian.

Thomas was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before taking a BA in 1953 at Queens' College, Cambridge. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. His 1961 book The Spanish Civil War won the Somerset Maugham Award for 1962. A significantly revised and enlarged third edition was published in 1977. Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971) is a book of over 1,500 pages tracing the history of Cuba from Spanish colonial rule until the Cuban Revolution. Thomas spent 10 years researching the contents of his book.

From 1966 to 1975 Thomas was Professor of History at the University of Reading. He was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991, as an ally of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He became a life peer as Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, of Notting Hill in Greater London in 1981. He has written pro-European political works, as well as histories. He is also the author of three novels.

Thomas should not be confused with two other historical writers called Hugh Thomas. W. Hugh Thomas writes about Nazi Germany. Hugh M. Thomas is an American who writes on English history.

Thomas is married to the former Vanessa Jebb, daughter of the first Acting United Nations Secretary-General Gladwyn Jebb.

[edit] Bibliography

  • The Spanish Civil War (1961); 2nd Revised edition (1977); 4th Revised edition (2003).
  • Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971)and with revised editions (1998) and (2002)
  • Europe: the Radical Challenge (1973)
  • An Unfinished History of the World (1979) published in USA as A History of the World and as the original title in London by Hamish Hamilton in (1979) and with revised editions (1981) and (1982).
  • Armed Truce (1986)
  • Ever Closer Union (1991)
  • Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994)
  • World History, The Story of Mankind from Prehistory to the Present (1996)
  • The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (1997)
  • Rivers of Gold (2003)
  • Beaumarchais of Seville (2007)
  • The World's Game
  • The Oxygen Age
  • The Suez Affair relates to the Suez Crisis of 1956
  • Europe: The Radical Challenge: Goya's 'The Third of May' 1808
  • Also a biography of John Strachey