Richard Charles Vinen (born 1963) is a British historian and academic who holds a professorship at King's College London. Vinen is a specialist in 20th-century European history, particularly of Britain and France.Professor Richard Vinen. King's College London. Retrieved 21 May 2015. His last book is The Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle, published in 2025.
Life Born in 1963Carl Levy, "1918–1945–1989: The Making and Unmaking of Stable Societies in Western Europe", in Carl Levy and Mark Roseman (eds), Three Postwar Eras in Comparison: Western Europe, 1918–1945–1989 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 2. in Birmingham, Vinen grew up on the Bournville Estate. His father, Joe Vinen, was a professor of physics, specialising in low temperature physics.."Acknowledgements" in Richard Vinen, Thatcher's Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era (London: Pocket Books, 2013)."Professor Frank William Vinen FRS CPhys Hon.FInstP (1930–2022)", Institute of Physics. Retrieved 5 March 2023. From 1982 to 1989, Richard Vinen attended Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985, and then completing his doctoral studies there;"Professor Richard Vinen", King's College London. Retrieved 20 September 2018."Richard Vinen Curriculum Vitae", Sciences Po (2015). Retrieved 20 September 2018. his PhD was awarded in 1989 for his thesis "The politics of French Business 1936–1945","The politics of French Business 1936–1945", EThOS (British Library). Retrieved 20 September 2018. supervised by Christopher Andrew.Richard Vinen, The Politics of French Business, 1936–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. xiii.
Academic career Vinen was a Fellow at Trinity from 1988 to 1992, and was a part-time lecturer at Queen Mary University of London from 1988 to 1991. He eventually moved to London where he and his wife lived in a succession of louche locations early in his career. He has written that "the Serious Crime Squad once installed a camera in our bedroom so that they could keep an eye on one of our neighbours."
After lecturing at Queen Mary, he joined King's College London in 1991 as a lecturer; he was promoted to a readership in 2001, and was appointed professor of history in 2007.
Work Vinen's book National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945–1963 (2014) received generally positive reviews. On 13 May 2015, he was presented with a Wolfson History Prize and Templer Medal for it. He also won the Walter Laqueur Prize in 2012 (recognising the best article in Journal of Contemporary History of the previous year) for "The Poisoned Madeleine: The Autobiographical Turn in Historical Writing".For the announcement, see Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 47, no. 3 (2012), p. 504. The article appeared in vol. 46, no. 3 (2011), pp. 531–554. In 2018, Vinen delivered the Institute of Historical Research's Creighton Lecture on the topic "When was Thatcherism?"."Autumn lectures on Irish, Public, and Modern British history", On History (Institute of Historical Research), 9 November 2018. Retrieved 9 February 2021. In 2020, he was one of three historians invited to give the Historical Research Lecture; it was entitled "Writing histories of 2020"."The 2020 Historical Research lecture: Writing histories of 2020: First responses and early perspectives", Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 262 (2020), pp. 786–806.
Books The Politics of French Business 1936–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bourgeois Politics in France, 1945–1951. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. France, 1934–1970. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century. London: Little, Brown, & Co., 2000. The Unfree French: Life under Occupation. London: Penguin, 2006. Thatcher's Britain. London: Simon & Schuster, 2009. National Service: Conscription in Britain 1945–1963. London: Allen Lane, 2014. The Long '68: Radical Protest and Its Enemies. London: Allen Lane, 2018. Second City: Birmingham and the Forging of Modern Britain. London: Penguin, 2022. The Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle. London: Bloomsbury, 2025.
References