Welcome!

I’m a historian of Britain after 1945. Between 2015 and 2020 I was Darby Fellow in Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford.

I created this website to promote my prize-winning book, The Hope of a World Transformed, which provides a radical new history of the moral revolution that Britain experienced in the 1960s. I’ve also included a few shorter thoughts on rethinking Britain’s Sixties. What exactly is a ‘postsecular’approach to the Sixties, you might have been wondering? Here is the place to find out.

This is an extremely exciting time to be writing contemporary British history. As we finally gain distance from the post-1945 period, it becomes possible, for the first time, to untangle ourselves from its assumptions. An entire thought-world separates the Britons of the early 1950s from the Britons of today, a lost thought-world submerged by the cultural revolution of the 1960s. For nearly two generations, contemporary British historiography has been written within the categories bequeathed by the Sixties. But by employing new developments in cultural theory, we can historicize the categories, untangle the mythologies, and finally achieve self-awareness about the invention of today’s  Britain.

If any of this seems interesting, have a read, and then get in touch.