Richard English

Richard English is a historian from Northern Ireland. He was born in Belfast in 1963. His father, Donald English (1930-1998) was a prominent Methodist preacher. He studied as an undergraduate at Keble College, Oxford, and subsequently at Keele University, where he was awarded a PhD in History. He was first employed by the Politics Department at Queen's University Belfast in 1990 and became a professor in 1999. He is currently Professor of Politics at Queen's, where he teaches Irish history and is the director of the MA in Irish politics.

Work

Most of his research has been centred on the Irish Republican movement and particularly the history of the Irish Republican Army. His first book, based on his doctoral thesis, concerned the history of post Irish Civil War Republican politics and was titled, "Radicals and the Republic, Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State" (1994). His next work was a biography of 1920s IRA veteran Ernie O'Malley, entitled "Ernie O'Malley, IRA Intellectual" which was published in 1998.

Since then, he has written "Armed Struggle - The History of the IRA" (2003). This book, predominantly a history of the modern Provisional IRA, won the politics book of the year award from the Political Studies Association and was shortlisted for the Ewart Biggs Memorial Prize. After this, he wrote a broader history of Irish nationalism, "Irish Freedom, The History of Nationalism in Ireland" (2006). This most recent text was the winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize 2007.

He has also co-edited two volumes: "The State: Historical and Political Dimensions" (1999, with Charles Townshend); and "Rethinking British Decline" (1999, with Michael Kenny).

External links

* [http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Staff/English/ Richard English's page at Queen's University Belfast]