Eric Ives

• 1. Introduction

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  Eric William Ives was born on the 12th of July 1931 in Romford, Essex, into a Plymouth Brethren family. He died on the 25th of September 2012, leaving behind a body of scholarly work that reshaped how historians and general readers alike think about Tudor England. He became emeritus Professor of English History at the University of Birmingham, and his name became inseparable from one of history's most contested women: Anne Boleyn. What drove a mild-mannered choir tenor from Essex to spend decades locked in fierce academic argument over a queen beheaded nearly five centuries earlier? And how did a man who began his adult life as an RAF pilot officer end up writing the defining biography of Henry VIII's second wife? Those questions run through everything that followed.

• 2. From Romford to the RAF

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  Brentwood School, then an all-boys public school in Brentwood, Essex, was where Ives received his secondary education. He went on to study history at Queen Mary College, London, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. His doctorate followed from the same institution, completed under the direction of S.T. Bindoff. Then, on the 24th of November 1955, came national service. Ives was commissioned into the Education Branch of the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer, assigned the service number 2766509. He was promoted to flying officer exactly one year later, on the 24th of November 1956, and to flight lieutenant on the 24th of May 1957. These two years between cap and gown and classroom shaped a man trained in precision and discipline before he ever set foot in a university lecture hall.

• 3. Building an Academic Life

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  After his RAF service ended, Ives worked briefly with the History of Parliament Trust as a research assistant. The four years that followed were spent as a Fellow at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. From 1961, he held a lectureship in Modern History at the University of Liverpool. He returned to Birmingham in 1967 as a history lecturer, and in 1987 he was appointed Professor of English History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He held that combined post until his retirement in 1997. Between 1989 and 1993 he also served as pro-vice-chancellor, a position at the core of the university's overall running. He was head of the Modern History department from 1994 until 1997. In 2000, he co-wrote with Diane K. Drummond and Leonard Schwarz a history of the institution itself, published by the University of Birmingham Press under the title The First Civic University: Birmingham, 1880-1980.

• 4. The Anne Boleyn Controversy

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  Around 1979, Ives began the research that would define his reputation. He published his findings in 1986 under the simple title Anne Boleyn. The biography examined the life of the woman who became Henry VIII's second wife and queen, and it drew sharp lines. American historian Retha Warnicke wrote The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn in 1989 specifically to challenge Ives's findings, and the two scholars were drawn into what observers called fierce debate. Ives revised and expanded his original book for re-publication in 2004, retitling it The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. His interest in the Tudor court extended beyond Anne herself. His biographical writing covered William Brereton, a Welsh land-owning magnate who was condemned to death in 1536 on the false charge of being Anne Boleyn's lover. Ives had already published Letters and Accounts of William Brereton in 1976, a decade before the Anne Boleyn biography appeared.

• 5. Lady Jane Grey and Later Work

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  In 2009, Ives turned his attention to another woman caught in Tudor power struggles. His study of Lady Jane Grey, published under the title Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery, examined the circumstances of her accession and downfall. It appeared the same year he turned seventy-eight. His range across the Tudor period was considerable: he wrote on the history of law, on the development of modern higher education, and in 1983 published The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England. His 2012 publication, The Reformation Experience: Living Through the Turbulent 16th Century, appeared in the final year of his life. In 2001 he received the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours, awarded in recognition of his services to history. Outside the academy, Ives sang as a tenor in a choir, had married his wife Ruth in 1961, and the family lived in Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon.