Alexander Brian McKillop (born 1946), known as A. B. McKillop or Brian McKillop, is Distinguished Research Professor and former Chancellor's Professor and Chair of the history department (2005–2009) of
Carleton University
Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning Wo ...
in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
McKillop was born in
Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...
,
Manitoba
, image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg
, map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada
, Label_map = yes
, coordinates =
, capital = Winn ...
, and educated at the
University of Manitoba
The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (PhD 1977). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2001.
A specialist in intellectual and cultural history, his books include:
*''A Critical Spirit: The Thought of William Dawson LeSueur'' (1977)
*''A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era'' (1979)
*''Contexts of Canada's Past: Selected Essays of W.L. Morton'' (1980)
*''Contours of Canadian Thought'' (1987)
*''Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791-1951'' (1994)
*''The Spinster and the Prophet: Florence Deeks, H.G. Wells, and the Mystery of the Purloined Past'' (2000).
*''Pierre Berton: A Biography'' (2008)
''The Spinster and the Prophet'' describes the court proceedings that resulted from accusations of plagiarism brought by Florence Deeks against
The Outline of History
''The Outline of History'', subtitled either "The Whole Story of Man" or "Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind", is a work by H. G. Wells chronicling the history of the world from the origin of the Earth to the First World War. It appear ...
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...
's President's Medal for Biography, and the
Crime Writers of Canada {{primary sources, date=January 2015
Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) is a national, non-profit organization, founded in 1982 by Derrick Murdock and other professional crime writers. Its mandate is to promote crime writing in Canada and to raise the p ...
Arthur Ellis Award
The Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, formerly known as the Arthur Ellis Awards, are a group of Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the Crime Writers of Canada for the best Canadian crime and mystery writing published in th ...
for "Best True Crime".
''The Spinster and the Prophet'' marked a change in McKillop's writings for publication. His previous books had been written as academic monographs, but this was his first attempt at writing in a popular narrative style, and he refers to its composition in an essay on Canadian historiography that he later wrote for a volume published by the University of Toronto in celebration of the Canadian historian Carl Berger. From his initial position of emotional detachment from his subject, he came to empathise strongly with Florence Deeks, and only later did he recognise that the death of his mother from lung cancer while he drafted the book had been an important factor in this. As McKillop puts it, "I wrote my book, I now understand, less as a practised historian or as a neophyte biographer, than as a grieving son..."https://carletonhistorygraduatestudentassociation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/mckillop-engaging.pdf
In the fall of 2008 McKillop released ''Pierre Berton: A Biography'', a comprehensive examination of the life of the late historian and media celebrity, Pierre Berton. The book won the Donald Grant Creighton Award of the Ontario Historical Society for best biography or memoir. It appeared as a trade paperback in September 2010.