Overview

My main research interests cover all aspects of the British response to the French Revolutionary and Napoleon and I have published on the political, diplomatic and military/naval aspects of that era. I also have wider interests in maritime and in naval history since 1689.

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Research

British politics and foreign and military policy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

Naval history since 1689, particularly the Revolutionary-Napoleonic War period 1792-1815, dockyards and naval logistics.

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Supervision

Eighteenth and nineteenth century British history, particularly political, diplomatic and military

Naval history since 1689

Research students

Recently completed PhD supervisions

Philip Weir, "The Royal Navy, the Fleet Air Arm and tactical development in the inter-war period (1918-39)" (2007)

Helen Doe, "Enterprising women: nineteenth-century maritime businesswomen" (2007)

Roger Parkinson, "The Naval Defence Act of 1889 and the origins of the new navalism of the 1890s" (2007)

Oliver Walton, "The social history of the late Victorian navy" (2004)

Kathleen Harland, "The early development of Royal Naval Hospitals" (2004)

Ivor Howcroft, "The Role of the Royal Navy in the Amphibious Assaults of the Second World War" (2002)

Wanda Troman, "Anglo-Polish naval relations between the two World Wars" PhD 2000.

Mary Cross, "The Victorian and Edwardian naval officer-corps" (2000)

Robert Hicks, "The Ideology of Maritime Museums, with Particular Reference to the Interpretation of Early Modern Navigation" (2000)

Thomas N.R. Wareham, "The role of the frigate captain in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars" (1999)

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Teaching

Modules taught

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Biography

Lincoln College Oxford (BA History 1966); MA, D.Phil. (1971)

Assistant Lecturer in History, University of Exeter 1969-72; Lecturer 1972-88; Senior Lecturer 1988-2001; Reader in British History 2001-6, Associate Professor of History 2006-

Dean of Arts 1994-7, Head of History 1999-2003, Director of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies 1991-2007

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More information

University of Exeter - Dean of Arts 1994-7, Head of History 1999-2003, Director of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies 1991-2007

Fellow of Royal Historical Society, member of the Navy Records Society and the Society for Nautical Research

Editor of The Mariner’s Mirror. The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research (1991-2000); Member of Council 1990-2004.

Vice President (1993-6, 2004-7) and member of Council and of publications committee, Navy Records Society since 1993

Member of the British Commission of the International Commission for Maritime History since 1993.

Trustee, Devonport Naval Base Museum

External examiner: BA and MA Birmingham (1994-97); BA Southampton (1998-2001); PhDs at Cambridge (1989), LSE (1990), Oxford (1991), East Anglia (1992), Birmingham (1993), Glasgow (1993), Portsmouth (1995), Essex (1997), KCL (2000), Bristol (2001), Murdoch University (Perth, Aus)(2002), Edinburgh (2004), Kent (2004), KCL (2006)

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