Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs (7 May 1921 – 15 March 2016) was an English historian. He was a leading specialist on the Victorian era, and the foremost historian of broadcasting in Britain. Briggs achieved international recognition during his long and prolific career for examining various aspects of modern British history.[2] He became a life peer in 1976.
During the Second World War, from 1942 to 1945, Briggs served in the Intelligence Corps and worked at the British wartime signals intelligence station, Bletchley Park. He was a member of "the Watch" in Hut 6, the section deciphering Enigma machine messages from the German Army and Luftwaffe.[5] That posting had arisen because Briggs had played chess at college with Cambridge mathematician Howard Smith (who was to become the Director General of MI5 in 1979), and Smith had written to the head of Hut 6, Gordon Welchman, who was also a Cambridge mathematician, recommending Briggs to him.[3]
From 1955 until 1961, he was professor of modern historyinLeeds University and between 1961 and 1976 he was professor of history in Sussex University, whilst also serving as dean of the School of Social Studies (1961–65), pro vice-chancellor (1961–67) and vice-chancellor (1967–76). On 4 June 2008, the University of Sussex Arts A1 and A2 lecture theatres, designed by Basil Spence, were renamed in his honour. In 1976, he returned to Oxford to become provostofWorcester College, retiring from the post in 1991.
Between 1961 and 1995, Briggs wrote a five-volume series on the history of broadcasting in the UK from 1922 to 1974 – essentially the history of the BBC, who commissioned the work.[3] Briggs' other works ranged from an account of the period that Karl Marx spent in London to the corporate history of British retailer Marks and Spencer.[3] In 1987, Lord Briggs was invited to be President of the Brontë Society, a literary society established in 1893 in Haworth, near Keighley, Yorkshire. He presided over the Society's centenary celebrations in 1993 and continued as President until he retired from the position in 1996.[8] He was also President of the William Morris Society from 1978 to 1991 and President of the UK's Victorian Society from 1986 until his death.[9]
Briggs headed the Committee on Nursing government investigation in the early 1970s. The Committee's subsequent report became known as the Briggs Report.[10]
Briggs married Susan Anne Banwell of Keevil, Wiltshire in 1955;[11] the couple had two sons and two daughters. He died at home in Lewes at the age of 94 on 15 March 2016.[12]
History of Birmingham, 3 volumes (Oxford University Press)
Volume II: Borough and City 1865-1938 (1952)
Briggs contributed volume 2 - volume 1 was written by Conrad Gill (1952) and volume 3 by Anthony Sutcliffe and Roger Smith (1974)
The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, 5 volumes (Oxford University Press)
The Birth of Broadcasting (1961)
The Golden Age of Wireless - 1927–1939 (1965)
The War of Words - 1939–1945 (1970)
Sound and Vision - 1945–1955 (1979)
Competition - 1955–1974 (1995)
Victorian People: Reassessments of People, Institutions, Ideas and Events, 1851-1867 (Odhams Press, 1954); reprinted in A Victorian Trilogy (Folio Society, 1996)
The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867 (Longmans, 1959) from "A History of England" series; reprinted as England in the Age of Improvement 1783-1867 (Folio Society, 1999)
Victorian Cities (Odhams Press, 1963); reprinted in A Victorian Trilogy (Folio Society, 1996)
Marx in London: An Illustrated Guide (BBC Books, 1982); reprinted with John Callow (Lawrence & Wishart, 2007)
A Social History of England (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983); reprinted and updated (Weidenfeld, 1994)
^Lemon, Charles (1993). "A Centenary History of The Brontë Society, 1893–1993". Brontë Society Transactions. Supplement to Volume 20: 105.
^Martin Crick, The History of the William Morris Society 1955–2005 (London, 2011); Paul Thompson, 'Asa Briggs 1921–2016', The Victorian: The Magazine of the Victorian Society, 52 (July 2016), p. 5.
United Kingdom
