Alastair Blair Worden, FBA (born 12 January 1945), usually cited as Blair Worden, is a historian, among the leading authorities on the period of the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

and on relations between literature and history more generally in the early modern period.

Education and career

He matriculated as an undergraduate at

Pembroke College, Oxford Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located at Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale, and was named after ...

, in 1963. After spending a year as a visiting student at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

he began graduate research at Oxford in 1967. After a period as a Fellow of

St Edmund Hall, Oxford St Edmund Hall (sometimes known as The Hall or informally as Teddy Hall) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. The college claims to be "the oldest surviving academic society to house and educate undergraduates in any university ...

, teaching History, he took up a position as a Professor at

Royal Holloway Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. In 1997 he was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

, and in 1999 he delivered the British Academy's Raleigh Lecture on History. As of 2011 he is an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall.St Edmund Hall, Oxford, webpage.
/ref> He is well known for his revolutionary article "Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan", which changed established historical perceptions about what exactly caused

Oliver Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...

to reject the offer of the Crown.

Books

* ''The Rump Parliament 1648–53'' (1974)
1977 pbk edition
* (ed.) Edmund Ludlow: ''A Voyce from the Watchtower'' (1978) * (ed.) ''History and Imagination: essays in honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper'' (1981) * (ed.) ''Stuart England'' (1986)
''The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan politics''
(1996) * ''Roundhead reputations: the English Civil Wars and the passions of posterity'' (2001)
''Literature and politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham''
(2007) * ''The English Civil Wars 1640–1660'' (2010)
ebook

''God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell''
(2012)

Selected articles and chapters

* "The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney", ''

Journal of British Studies The publication of thNorth American Conference on British Studies ''The Journal of British Studies'' is an academic journal aimed at scholars of British culture from the Middle Ages through the present. The journal was co-founded in 1961 by Geor ...

'', 24 (1985), 1–40 * "Andrew Marvell, Oliver Cromwell and the Horatian ode", in ''Politics of Discourse: The literature and history of seventeenth-century England'', ed. Kevin Sharpe and

Steven N. Zwicker Steven Nathan Zwicker (born June 4, 1943) is an American literary scholar and the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Biography Zwicker is an expert on Restoration-era English li ...

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 147–80 * "Cromwellian Oxford", in ''The History of the University of Oxford'', ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 733–72
"The Question of Secularization"
in ''A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration'', ed. Alan Houston and Stephen Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 20–40 * "Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate", ''

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Transaction or transactional may refer to: Commerce * Financial transaction, an agreement, communication, or movement carried out between a buyer and a seller to exchange an asset for payment *Debits and credits in a Double-entry bookkeeping sys ...

'', 6th ser., 20 (2010), 57–84
"Oliver Cromwell and the Sin of Achan"
in ''Cromwell and the Interregnum: The Essential Readings'', ed. D. L. Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 37–60

References

External links

Worden author page and article archive
from ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

''
A life in writing: Blair Worden
{{DEFAULTSORT:Worden, Blair Living people British historians 1945 births Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford Fellows of St Edmund Hall, Oxford