Life in My Third Age
Contributor Notes
Brief Biography
In 1960 I graduated from University College London with a BA in geography with history. I remained at UCL to complete, in 1963, a PhD on the agricultural geography of medieval Kent. UCL was an international centre of excellence in historical geography, led by Professor H. Clifford Darby, my research supervisor. After three years on the staff at UCL, I moved with Darby, in 1966, to the University of Cambridge. In 1970 I became the first Fellow in Geography at Emmanuel College. My early research on medieval field systems in England gave way to work on rural settlements in France during the nineteenth century. That interest then mutated into a study of the historical geography of voluntary associations (including agricultural cooperatives, mutual aid societies, volunteer fire brigades, bands, choirs, and sports clubs) in provincial France 1815–1914.
Historical geography has been for me a passion. I sought to promote it not only through research and teaching but also through a series of research seminars in Cambridge that ran for more than 30 years, through editing for 10 years the international Journal of Historical Geography, through co-editing more than 40 books in a monograph series published by Cambridge University Press, and through co-founding a series of international conferences of historical geographers.