George Garnett

George Stephen Garnett (born Watford, 1958 ) is a British academic historian, specialising in late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. In 2014, the University of Oxford awarded him the title of Professor of Medieval History.

Education and career Garnett completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Queens' College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1977. His graduate work was supervised first by Walter Ullmann and then Sir James Holt upon Ullmann's death. Garnett won the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize in 1986. His doctoral dissertation was awarded the Prince Consort Prize by the university's Faculty of History in 1988. Garnett was appointed successively to a Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge and a Teaching Fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was appointed a Tutorial Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1990 and also a lecturer at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. From 2008-2010 he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. In 2014, the University awarded him the title of Professor of Medieval History. The following year, he was appointed the University's senior proctor.

In May 2025, Garnett was appointed the literary director of the Selden Society, a learned society dedicated to English legal history. He is the author of the column 'Making History' for History Today. In succession to Richard Sharpe, he runs the project to edit the acta of William Rufus and Henry I.

Personal life Garnett has three children. His partner, Helen Pike, is the incumbent and first female Master of Magdalen College School, Oxford.

Select publications Garnett specialises in the history of England between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and has studied the impact of the Norman Conquest on kingship and land-holding in his 2007 monograph Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure. He has subsequently studied the historiography of the Conquest, as well as late medieval early modern political writings about resistance. His publications include: "Dare Unchaperoned to Gaze": A Woman’s View of Edwardian Oxford (Oxford: St Hugh's College, Oxford, 2015) (with J. G. H. Hudson) "Introduction", in Magna Carta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 1–32 "Magna Carta through eight centuries", in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) "Coronation", in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) John Selden and the Norman Conquest (London: Selden Society, 2013) "Robert Curthose: the duke who lost his trousers", Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 35 (2012), pp. 213–243 "'The ould fields': law and history in the prefaces to Sir Edward Coke's report", Journal of Legal History, vol. 34, issue 3 (2013), pp. 244–283 The Norman Conquest: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ) Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). "Law in the Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos: a vindication", The Historical Journal, vol. 49, issue 3 (2006), pp. 877–891 Marsilius of Padua and 'the Truth of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Biographies of Fulk Bairnard (d. after 1242), Henry of Braybrooke (d. 1234), Richard Malebisse (c. 1155–c. 1209), Walter of Pattishall (d. c. 1231), and Walter Ullmann (1910–1983), in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). "Introduction", in A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2003), pp. x–xviii "The third recension of the English coronation ordo: the manuscripts", The Haskins Society Journal (2003), pp. 43–71 "Conquered England", in The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 61–101 "The origins of the crown", Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 89 (1996), pp. 171–214 (with J. Hudson) Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) (Stephanius Jurius Brutus, ed. by George Garnett) Brutus: Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) "Coronation and propaganda: some implications of the Norman claim to the throne of England in 1066", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 36 (1986), pp. 91–116 "Franci et Angli: the legal distinctions between peoples after the Conquest", Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 13 (1985).