Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton (born 21 October 1931) is an English historian and writer.^[1] He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

Biography

Thomas was born 21 October 1931 in Windsor, England, to Hugh Whitelegge Thomas, a colonial commissioner, and his wife Margery Angela Augusta née Swynnerton. Sir Shenton Thomas was his uncle. He was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, before taking a BA in 1951 at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was a major scholar and is now an Honorary Fellow. Thomas gained a first class in Part I of the History Tripos in 1952 and was president of the Cambridge Union Society in 1953. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.

From 1954 to 1957, Thomas worked in the Foreign Office partly as secretary of the British Delegation to the sub-committee of the UN Disarmament Commission. From 1966 to 1975, he was professor of History at the University of Reading, and chairman of the European committee. Thomas was then chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991, which worked for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thomas became a life peer as Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, of Notting Hill in Greater London in letters patent dated 16 June 1981 as a Conservative, before joining the Liberal Democrats in 1998.^[2] Until 1974 he had been a member of the Labour Party.^[3]

He has written pro-European political works such as Europe: the Radical Challenge (1973), as well as histories. He is also the author of three novels: The World's Game (1957), The Oxygen Age (1958), and Klara (1988). Thomas' 1961 book The Spanish Civil War won the Somerset Maugham Award for 1965. A significantly revised and enlarged third edition was published in 1977. Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971) is a book of over 1,500 pages tracing the history of Cuba from Spanish colonial rule until the Cuban Revolution.

Thomas is married to the Hon. Vanessa Jebb, a painter and daughter of the first Acting United Nations Secretary-General Gladwyn Jebb, 1st Baron Gladwyn, and ambassador in Paris. They have three children.

Works

• Disarmament – the way ahead Fabian Society (1957).
• The Spanish Civil War (1961); Penguin Books Ltd (1968); 2nd Revised edition (1977); 4th Revised edition (2003). A new revised edition in 2011^[4] commemorated the book being 50 years in print; it was published in 15 languages.
• Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971); revised editions (1998), (2002), (2010).
• Goya: The Third of May 1808 (1972).
• Europe: the Radical Challenge (1973).
• John Strachey (1973).
• An Unfinished History of the World (1979); published in USA as A History of the World, then as "World History" (1998); and by the original title in London (by Hamish Hamilton) in (1979) and with revised editions in (1981) and (1982).
• The revolution on balance (1983), Washington, DC; Cuban American National Foundation 1983 (CANF pamphlet #5).
• Armed Truce (1986). A history of the beginning of the Cold War.
• Ever Closer Union (1991).
• The conquest of Mexico (1993); published in USA as Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico.
• The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (1997); Simon and Schuster.
• Who Is Who of the Conquistadors (2000). A study of those who fought for Cortés.
• Rivers of Gold (2003); first book of a trilogy about the Spanish Empire.
• Beaumarchais in Seville (2006); ISBN 978-0-300-12103-2.
• Eduardo Barreiros and the Recovery of Spain (2009); a biography of Eduardo Barreiros.
• The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V (2010); second book of a trilogy about the Spanish Empire. Published in USA as The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America (2011).
• The World's Game; a novel (1957).
• The Oxygen Age; a novel (1958).
• Klara, a novel (1988).
• The Suez Affair (1966); an analysis of the Suez Crisis of 1956.
• World Without End: The Global Empire of Philip II (2014); third volume of a trilogy about the Spanish Empire.

Awards

Thomas won the Somerset Maugham Award (1962), the Nonino Prize (2009), the Boccaccio Prize (2009), the Gabarrón Prize (2008) and the Calvo Serer Prize (2009). The French Government appointed him Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2008.

Thomas has also received the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic^[5] from Spain as well as the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the Joaquín Romero Murube Prize in Seville (2013) and the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise (2014).^[6]

References