Pat Thompson

Arthur Frederick Thompson (6 June 1920 – 9 October 2009), known as Pat Thompson, was an academic historian specialising in 19th-century British politics and the trade union movement.

Early life and war service Thompson was born on 9 June 1920 at Preston, Lancashire, the son of a Londonderry-born civil servant. Three years later, the family followed his father's work to Northern Ireland (he was a senior finance officer in the government) and then in 1936 to London. After schooling at Campbell College and Dulwich College, Thompson was admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner to study history and was taught by K. B. McFarlane and A. J. P. Taylor. After graduating with a first-class degree in 1941, he trained as a paratrooper and served in World War II. Wounded in Normandy in 1944, he was moved over to GCHQ at Bletchley Park and then, with the war over, returned to Oxford.

Career Although he passed the civil service examination with a very high score, Thompson accepted an offer to become a tutor at Wadham College, Oxford, in 1947, and remained there for the rest of his career, serving as domestic bursar, senior tutor and sub-warden. His academic studies began with 19th-century politics, and he intended to mix Sir Lewis Namier's style of analysis with careful studies of voting behaviour and apply these approaches to the premiership of William Gladstone. was marked by the publication of a Festschrift, Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain, edited by Philip Waller.