Short answers, pulled from the story.
T. S. Ashton, born Thomas Southcliffe Ashton on the 11th of January 1889, was an English economic historian best known for arguing that the Industrial Revolution delivered genuine economic and social achievements for Britain. He was Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics from 1944 to 1954 and a Fellow of the British Academy from 1951.
Ashton's best-known work is The Industrial Revolution 1760-1830, published in 1948. The textbook emphasises the economic and social achievements of industrialisation in the United Kingdom and shaped the study of the period for generations.
Ashton taught at Sheffield University from 1912 to 1919, Birmingham University from 1919 to 1921, Manchester University from 1921 onward (where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Administration from 1938 to 1944), and finally at the London School of Economics from 1944 to 1954.
The T. S. Ashton Prize is an annual award from the Economic History Society, funded by money Ashton himself donated. Worth £750, it is given at every other annual conference to the author of the best article accepted for publication in the Economic History Review over the previous two calendar years.
No. A BBC Freedom of Information request in January 2012 revealed that Ashton turned down a knighthood in 1957.
Ashton wrote extensively on eighteenth-century British economic life, covering the iron and steel industries (1924), the coal industry (1929), economic fluctuations in England from 1700 to 1800 (1959), and overseas trade statistics from 1697 to 1808 (1960). He also wrote a close study of the manufacturer Peter Stubs of Warrington, published in 1939.