Diarmaid MacCulloch

Life Diarmaid MacCulloch was born in Kent, England, to the Rev. Nigel John Howard MacCulloch (an Anglican priest) and Jennie Chappell.

In 2011, he delivered the Gifford Lectures on Silence in Christian History: the witness of Holmes' Dog at the University of Edinburgh. In 2012, he wrote and presented How God Made the English, a three-part documentary series tracing the history of English identity from the Dark Ages to the present day. In 2013 he presented a documentary on Thomas Cromwell and his place in English ecclesiastical and political history. His 2015 series Sex and the Church on BBC Two explored how Christianity has shaped western attitudes to sex, gender and sexuality throughout history.

In 2018, MacCulloch published the biography Thomas Cromwell: A Life. MacCulloch sits on the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press.

In 2019, MacCulloch retired as Professor of the History of the Church and was made professor emeritus. In addition to his position at St Cross College, he has been a senior research fellow in church history and archivist at Campion Hall, Oxford since 2020.

Honours MacCulloch was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) in 1978, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) in 1982, and a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2001. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) degree by the University of East Anglia. He was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to scholarship. While Debrett's gives his formal style as "Prof Sir", MacCulloch has expressed the preference that he not be addressed in that manner, in accordance with protocol which dictates that clergy holding knighthoods are addressed as "Sir" only if so honoured before their ordination. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 2025.

1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Thomas Cranmer: A Life 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 2004 British Academy Book Prize for Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 2004 Wolfson History Prize for Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 2010 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for A History of Christianity 2010 Cundill Prize in History for A History of Christianity

In 2021, he was awarded a Festschrift titled "Contesting Orthodoxies in the History of Christianity: Essays in Honour of Diarmaid MacCulloch".

Selected works Filmography A History of Christianity (TV series) (2009) How God Made the English (2012) Henry VIII's Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell (2013) Sex and the Church (2015)

Books Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County 1500–1600 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986) Groundwork of Christian History (London, Epworth Press, 1987) The Later Reformation in England (1990) German: Die Reformation 1490-1700 (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt) Henry VIII: Politics, Policy, and Piety (1995) Thomas Cranmer: A Life (Yale University Press, 1996) Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (1999) republished as The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (2001) Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 (2003) republished as The Reformation: A History (2005)

Silence: A Christian History (London, Allen Lane, 2013) All Things Made New: The Reformation and its Legacy (London, Allen Lane, 2016) Thomas Cromwell: A Life (London, Allen Lane, 2018) Tudor Rebellions (2020) Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

Articles Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Fighting Monks" (review of Francis Young, Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples, Cambridge, 2025, 432 pp., ; and Aleksander Pluskowski, The Black Cross: A History of the Baltic Crusades, Yale, 2026, 447 pp., ), London Review of Books, vol. 48, no. 9 (21 May 2026), pp. 13–16. "Anglophone readers are doubly blessed with this pair of illuminating introductions to a region of Europe still unfamiliar to many." (p. 16.)