Sir geoffrey elton biography

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After his discharge from the army, Elton studied early modern history at the University of London, graduating with a PhD in 1949.

Slavin Arthur.

In arguing for the primacy of evidence in historical work Elton had to contend with the argument that the intrusion of human subjectivity in the interpretation and selection of the `facts' vitiated what were claimed to be true accounts of the past.

Elton also took solace in his belief that while `the historian ... Elton wrote his 1967 book The Practice of History largely in response to Carr's 1961 book What is History?.

Elton was a strong defender of the traditional methods of history and was appalled by postmodernism, once intoning on the subject: '...we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights - the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact.

Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Annual bibliography of British and Irish history, Brighton, Sussex [England]:Harvester Press ; Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1976.

Elton's first and most famous foray into the philosophy of history was The Practice of History (1967)--a manifesto, he said, setting out his experience of studying, writing and teaching history.

Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell, Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Guy, John "The Tudor Commonwealth: Revising Thomas Cromwell" pages 681-685 from Historical Journal Volume 23, Issue 3, 1980.

Williams, Percy and Harriss, Gavin "A Revolution in Tudor History?" Past and Present, Volume 25, 1963.

Elton's name will forever be identified with the Tudors and his numerous textbooks, monographs, and papers on early modern England must surely rank as one of the greatest ever achievements of historical labour. R. Elton: Tudor Champion' in W.L. Arnstein (ed), Recent Historians of Great Britain (Iowa State University Press, 1990).

An extensive critique of Elton's philosophy of history is presented by K.

Jenkins, On `What is History?': From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London 1995).

Horowitz, M.R. "Which Road to the Past?" History Today, Volume 34, January 1984. While there, he took courses via correspondence at the University of London and graduated with a degree in Ancient History in 1943.

When people acted in the past, exercised their will and made choices they made their futures and created our present. "Telling the Story: G.R Elton and the Tudor Age" pages 151-169 from Sixteenth Century Journal, Volume 21, Issue 2, 1990.

He was the brother of the education researcher Lewis Elton and therefore the uncle of Lewis's comedian and writer son, Ben Elton.

The historian cannot but work on the assumption that whatever happened is capable of rational explanation and that evidence is the product of an act discoverable by reason. Such causes he divided into two types: situational causes and direct causes.

Despite Elton's robust defence of `good history', he was acutely aware of how limited a knowledge of the past was provided by historians.

Slavin, Arthur. This change took place in the 1530s and must be regarded as part of a planned revolution. In the case of Elton's `philosophy', much of what he said was said by others--one thinks of Isaiah Berlin, Carl Becker, R. G. Collingwood, Pieter Geyl, even Jack Hexter--and sometimes said better.