Christopher Hill

John Edward Christopher Hill (6 February 1912 – 23 February 2003) was an English Marxist historian and academic, specialising in 17th-century English history. From 1965 to 1978 he was Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Early life and education Christopher Hill was born on 6 February 1912, Bishopthorpe Road, York, to Edward Harold Hill and Janet Augusta (née Dickinson). He attended St Peter's School, York.

At the age of 16, he sat his entrance examination at Balliol College, Oxford. The two history tutors who marked his papers recognised his ability and offered him a place in order to forestall any chance he might go to the University of Cambridge. In 1931 Hill took a prolonged holiday in Freiburg, Germany, where he witnessed the rise of the Nazi Party, later saying that it contributed significantly to the radicalisation of his politics.

He matriculated at Balliol College in 1931. In the following year he won the Lothian Prize, particularly via speculation originating with Anthony Glees in his Secrets of the Service (1987). Several academics, including Eric Hobsbawm and John Saville, defended Hill. Further, declassified MI5 documents are reported to have found no evidence of him being a spy.

Career After returning to England from Russia in 1936, Hill accepted a teaching position as an assistant lecturer at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff. During his time there he attempted to join the International Brigade and fight in the Spanish Civil War, but was rejected. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on 2 November 1940 with the service number 156590. At around this time Hill started to publish his articles and reviews about 17th-century English history. On 19 October 1941 he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps. He was seconded to the Foreign Office from 1943 until the war ended. whom he married on 2 January 1956. She was the ex-wife of Stephen Mason, a fellow Communist and historian. Their daughter Kate died in a car accident in 1957. They had two other children: Andrew (born 1958) and Dinah (born 1960).

Hill, along with Hobsbawm, was spied on by MI5 for decades. MI5 found that Abraham Lazarus confessed to an affair with Hill's first wife, Inez, in 1948.

In Hill's later years he lived with Alzheimer's disease and required constant care. He died in a nursing home in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, on 23 February 2003.

Selected works The English Revolution, 1640 (1940, 3rd ed. 1955), (On-line text at marxists.org) Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1947), (1971, 1972, 1993 reprints) Economic Problems of the Church: From Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (1956), (1971 reprint) Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century (1958), (2001 reprint) The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (1961, 2nd. ed. 1980), Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (1964), (2003 reprint) Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (1965, rev. 1997), Reformation to Industrial Revolution: A Social and Economic History of Britain, 1530–1780 (1967, rev. ed. 1969), God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1970), Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (1971, rev. ed. 1990), The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1972), Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (1974, rev. ed. 1991), Milton and the English Revolution (1977), (with William M. Lamont and Barry Reay) The World of the Muggletonians (1983), The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries (1984), The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill (3 vols.) Writing and Revolution in 17th Century England (1985), Religion and Politics in 17th Century England (1986), People and Ideas in 17th Century England (1986), A Turbulent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628–1688 (1988), —published in the United States as A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628-1688 (1989), A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seventeenth-Century England (1990), The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1992), Liberty Against The Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies (1996),