Philip Payton

Philip John Payton (born 1953) is a British-Australian historian and emeritus professor of Cornish and Australian studies. Payton is also Vice-President of the British Australian Studies Association at the University of Exeter and formerly director of the Institute of Cornish Studies based at Tremough, just outside Penryn, Cornwall. An Australian citizen, he is professor of history at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

Birth and education He was born in 1953 in Sussex. His mother was Cornish, from the Helston area. His father was a merchant seaman, then businessman and academic. Payton spent much of his childhood in Sussex and attended Haywards Heath Grammar School. Active in Mebyon Kernow (the Party for Cornwall) as a teenager, he began his writing career in articles on Cornish history and politics in journals such as New Cornwall and Cornish Nation. He obtained his first degree from the University of Bristol in 1975 and returned to Australia (where he had lived as a child) to read for a doctorate at the University of Adelaide, choosing as his theme the Cornish in Australia, completing this in 1978.

Naval career In 1979 he joined the Royal Navy as an officer in the Instructor Branch, training at the Britannia Royal Naval College (HMS Dartmouth) (Dartmouth) and at sea in HMS Intrepid before being appointed to at Torpoint in Cornwall. Subsequently, he served at , and at the Royal Naval Engineering College at Manadon (HMS Thunderer) . He finally retired from the Navy in 2008.

Academic career

In 1990 he gained a second doctorate, from the University of Plymouth, for a study of modern Cornwall from a centre-periphery perspective. He joined the University of Exeter as director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, then situated at Pool, near Redruth, in 1991 but now at the Penryn Campus. He was promoted Reader in 1995 and Professor in 2000. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. In 2013 he was elected an Hon Fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of the Humanities, shortly before stepping down as director of the Institute of Cornish Studies. He is now emeritus professor of Cornish and Australian studies at the University of Exeter, as well as professor of history at Flinders University in Australia.

Amongst his many books and articles are Making Moonta: The Invention of Australia's Little Cornwall (2007), A. L. Rowse and Cornwall: A Paradoxical Patriot (2005), and the acclaimed Cornwall – A History, first published in 1996 and updated in 2004, which remains a major modern authoritative history of Cornwall. Other titles include The Cornish Miner in Australia (1984), The Making of Modern Cornwall (1992), and Cornwall Since the War (1993). He also edited the annual book series, Cornish Studies, published by University of Exeter Press, for twenty years, and was editor-in-chief of the Millennium Book for Cornwall Kernow Bys Vyken! – Cornwall Forever!, published by Cornwall Heritage Trust and distributed free to every schoolchild in Cornwall in 2000.

His other research interests in Modern Cornish history include Cornish emigration; ethnicity and territorial politics; and centre-periphery relations.

In 2010 he completed a book on John Betjeman and Cornwall: 'The Celebrated Cornish Nationalist (University of Exeter Press), and is editing (with Helen Doe and Alston Kennerley) a Maritime History of Cornwall. Among his other books are Regional Australia and the Great War: "The Boys from Old Kio" (University of Exeter Press, 2012), and a History of Sussex, published in 2017.

Bard of the Cornish Gorseth Payton was made a Bard of Gorsedh Kernow in 1981, taking the Bardic name Car Dyvresow ('Friend of Exiles').

In 2006 Payton's book A. L. Rowse and Cornwall: a paradoxical patriot won the Gorseth's Holyer an Gof trophy for best publication.

Personal life

He has two adult daughters.

Select publications Books

Paperback: Paperback: .

Rev. & updated ed., Fowey: Cornwall Editions, 2005, Rev. ed. Cornwall : A history, Fowey: Cornwall Editions, 2004,

Paperback:

Articles (selected)