Curated playlist

Fellows of the British Academy

C. S. LewisC. S. Lewis died the same afternoon President Kennedy was shot. His death was almost swallowed by the news from Dallas.
John Baines (Egyptologist)John Baines became an Oxford professor of Egyptology by age thirty. It came in 1976, the year of his doctorate.
Tim DysonTim Dyson wrote a 2018 book on India's population from the earliest modern humans to today.
Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz explained why wages stay high in recessions even when workers are desperate for jobs.
Odd Arne WestadOdd Arne Westad argues the Cold War was not mainly a European story. His work made "global Cold War" a standard term.
A. C. BradleyA 1926 poem imagined Shakespeare failing an exam for not reading his critic. The critic was A. C. Bradley.
James Graham-CampbellJames Graham-Campbell studied Viking gold and silver found across Scotland. His 1995 catalogue spans AD 850 to 1100.
Friedrich HayekThree days before the 1929 Wall Street crash, Friedrich Hayek wrote that no sudden collapse was expected.
Esther DufloEsther Duflo was 46 when she became the youngest Nobel economics winner ever. She shared it in 2019.
Jasper GriffinAn Oxford classicist coined a word that chemists now use. Jasper Griffin's word "agostic" was adopted by Malcolm Green.
John Boardman (art historian)John Boardman took over the Oxford chair once held by vase expert John Beazley. He widened it to Persia and China.
Joan RobinsonEconomist Joan Robinson coined a word in 1933 that the Supreme Court used in 2019.
Angus DeatonIn 2024, Nobel economist Angus Deaton said he had changed his mind on much of mainstream economics.
Janet NelsonAfter her 1967 PhD, Janet Nelson's supervisor reportedly told a colleague not to speak of her.
Rana MitterRana Mitter's book on China's war with Japan has different British and American titles.
Howard Hayes ScullardHistorian Howard Hayes Scullard wrote chapters that were published only after he died.
Alfred MarshallAlfred Marshall, who invented the supply and demand graph, began as a mathematician.
Peter Brown (historian)Peter Brown argued that the late Roman world was a time of invention, not decline.
Thomas William Rhys DavidsA Ceylon magistrate met Pali through a court document, then founded the Pali Text Society.
Amartya SenAmartya Sen carries a name that was chosen for him by a Nobel laureate. Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize, gave the newborn the name অমর্ত্য. The boy was born on the 3rd of November 1933 in Santiniketan, Bengal,…
Gabriel Turville-PetreIn August 1942, the Foreign Office sent Gabriel Turville-Petre to the Faroe Islands for two months. The stated purpose was "in order to study the inhabitants, their politics and conditions of life." Edward Oswald Gabriel Turville-Petre was…
Arthur EvansArthur Evans dug into a Cretan hill in March 1900 and found a palace with over a thousand rooms.
James George FrazerJames George Frazer wrote about world cultures without ever doing fieldwork. He relied on mailed questionnaires.
Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)Stuart Hall's Oxford plan to study the poem Piers Plowman ended when J. R. R. Tolkien objected.
Lionel RobbinsLionel Robbins refused to sign John Maynard Keynes's Depression-era draft. They later reconciled.
T. D. KendrickT. D. Kendrick's own daughter did not know he was her father. He was a British Museum archaeologist.
Eric HobsbawmMI5 blocked Eric Hobsbawm from a BBC job in 1945 over his communism. He later became a celebrated historian.
Andrew Wallace-HadrillHistorian Andrew Wallace-Hadrill said Pompeii was suffering a "second death". He blamed human neglect.
Simon Baron-CohenSir Simon Baron-Cohen is a British clinical psychologist at the University of Cambridge who has studied autism since 1982. Across that career he has put forward three large theories about the condition. Each one took a decade or more to…
Karl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna on the 28th of July 1902 and died on the 17th of September 1994. In between, he built a philosophy of science on an odd idea. The strongest theories, he argued, are the ones most exposed to being…
Alfred North WhiteheadAlfred North Whitehead walked into his Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1927 and lost his audience within a week. The astronomer Arthur Eddington had given the series the year before, and he had held a crowd of 600 people…
Geoffrey KirkGeoffrey Kirk commanded a small fishing boat in the Aegean before he became a Homer scholar.
Ronald SymeA 1939 book argued that Rome's first emperor, Augustus, ruled as a cunning autocrat.
H. J. RoseH. J. Rose's A Handbook of Greek Mythology, first published in 1928, became a standard student reference.
A. J. AyerA. J. Ayer once told Mike Tyson to talk like a rational man. The philosopher stepped in at a 1987 party.
Frederick CoplestonWorld War II closed Frederick Copleston's path to a Rome doctorate. He taught at Heythrop instead.
John Maynard KeynesAt Bretton Woods in 1944, Keynes proposed a world currency called the bancor, and the United States rejected it.
Roy PorterHistorian Roy Porter died while cycling, five months into retirement. He planned to learn the saxophone.
Quentin SkinnerQuentin Skinner turned down a knighthood offered with a Cambridge professorship. His republicanism would not allow it.
A. L. RowseA china clay worker's son from Cornwall claimed to name Shakespeare's Dark Lady.
Frank KermodeIn 1996, city refuse collectors carted off critic Frank Kermode's boxes of valuable books. He sued for £20,000.
George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…
Peter TrudgillLinguist Peter Trudgill found the Beatles pronounced fewer r sounds over the 1960s.
Roger ScrutonRoger Scruton was standing in the Latin Quarter of Paris in May 1968, watching students overturn cars, smash windows and tear up cobblestones. The English philosopher later said that for the first time in his life he "felt a surge of…