Jeremy Black

An authority on 18th-century British history in particular, Jeremy Black is one of today’s most prolific academic writers with titles spanning military and politic history as well as warfare, cartography and culture. ...

Born in London in 1955, Black achieved a starred First at Queen’s College, Cambridge before undertaking further research at Oxford, receiving a PhD in 1983 for his thesis on British foreign policy. Soon after, his desire to work first-hand with some archival material in Newcastle coincided with Durham University’s search for a history lecturer and, almost on a whim, Black applied. Despite stiff competition he was offered the post almost immediately and over the next nine years taught courses centred on early modern European and British history and was promoted to Professor. In this phase of his career he also published 15 books, setting a fast pace but one that has only accelerated.

By the mid 1990s it was time for a change and, influenced in part by his wife’s keenness to move south, Black applied to the University of Exeter. Engaged in the role of Established Chair for History he particularly enjoyed lecturing and the opportunity to build strong relationships with his students – he maintains the belief that education is enhanced by a personable tutor-pupil connection – and writing at a phenomenal rate to produce over 100 books in the next two decades alone.

As if that were not enough, Black also took on the role of editor for series such as Routledge’s Warfare and History and Macmillan’s European History in Perspective and sat on the boards of journals including History Today, and was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History in 2008.

Since retiring from teaching in 2020 Black has presented a weekly podcast for The Critic Magazine, remains Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, and continues to pen a remarkable number of books and blog posts that together amount to ‘the most sustained presentation of British history in recent decades’.