About me

The discussion interests mentioned on my homepage reflect earlier themes in my work as well as current and future interests. Previous work has taken up the following concerns: the history of popular politics, popular culture, the nature and meanings of work, the history and theory of individual and collective social identities, the history and theory of the social, liberalism and the city, and the history of the state, the latter two themes in relation to governmentality and the history of material power. The state, especially the British one after 1945, and the nature of the new sorts of political history now emerging are my principal areas of current interest: both are parts of the history of power which is the driving force of what I do. I am also interested in the theory and the writing of history, having written on the subject of history, postmodernism and the cultural turn (see my most recent article in this area, in the Feb., 2010 edition of Past and Present “What is the social in social history?”, which is available on this site ).
I have just completed a book on the nature of the British state from the late-nineteenth century onwards, called The State of Freedom: Making the Liberal Leviathan, Britain since 1800. This will be published by Cambridge University Press in Spring, 2013. With Tony Bennett, I co-edited a book on the nature of material power in history, called Material Powers, published by Routledge, Spring 2010.
I am co-organiser of the AHRC Inequality and History Research Network, which will be active between 2012-15. This approachs the subject of inequality in historical fashion, something which has not characterised public discourse in Britain. The network aims with a variety of workshops and seminars to link the study of inequality with current social theory and new historiographies. It is also closely linked to questions of policy, particularly in Britain. Pedro Ramos Pinto in the History Department, Manchester, is the boss of this enterprise.

I was born in west London and grew up in Paddington and Notting Hill in the post-war years. This was a Catholic and Irish upbringing, my parents being immigrants from Co. Mayo and Co. Wexford in Ireland. The two flanking figures in Koudelka’s great picture of Ireland on the homepage are two close family relations of mine. I was born and brought up near Harrow Road, and on the homepage there is a photograph of this area by the brilliant street photographer Roger Mayne. My street was marginally posher than this one, Brindley Road, these margins being very important for us locals of course). I attended a Secondary Modern school, even though I passed the notorious 11-plus examination, this kind of schools being almost the lowest level of the class-driven state schooling then available. After school from the age of 16 I worked in a variety of jobs, more or less menial, and then attended the University of Keele in the 1960s (University motto: “Thanke God for All”). I did my graduate work at Balliol College, Oxford and then taught in London, followed by a long period at Manchester University, to 2007. After this, retiring in order to get some work done, I have been peripatetic. For those who wish to have further information see my article “More Secondary Modern Than Postmodern”, which is available on the site.

Photo credit: Roger Mayne, Street Cricket, Clarendon Cresent 1957

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