Arthur Marwick, 1936-2006

Somewhat belatedly, I provide links to obituaries of Arthur Marwick, who was a historian long associated with the department to which I now belong. I never knew him personally, but his books The Deluge, on British society and the First World War, and British Society Since 1945 were prominent among the important things I read in graduate school.

He is remembered by A W Purdue in the Guardian and by my colleague Clive Emsley in the Independent (requires subscription or fee; also available via War Starts at Midnight!)

Fittingly enough, sometime next year, an article on a contemporary novel which I co-wrote with my wife will be published with two epigraphs, one of which is from Marwick. It's a quote which we quite like:

... it is only through knowledge of its history that a society can have knowledge of itself. As a man without a memory and self-knowledge is a man adrift, so a society without memory (or more correctly, without recollection) and self-knowledge would be a society adrift.

The other epigraph we've used is from Marx.

This is company which Marwick would most likely not have approved of.

However: Men may receive tributes; but they do not always receive them as they please....