Raymond Carr

Sir Albert Raymond Maillard Carr (11 April 1919 – 19 April 2015) was an English historian specialising in the history of Spain, Latin America, and Sweden. From 1968 to 1987, he was Warden of St Antony's College, Oxford.

Early life Carr was born on 11 April 1919 in Bath, Somerset, to Reginald Henry Maillard Carr and his wife (Ethel Gertrude) Marion (née Graham). He was educated at Brockenhurst School, then a state secondary school in the New Forest, Hampshire. He then studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected Gladstone Research Exhibitioner in 1941.

Career Carr was briefly a lecturer at University College London, in 1945–1946, before returning to Oxford as a Fellow of All Souls College, 1946–1953.

As a historian and Hispanist, Carr's main interest lay in the vicissitudes of 19th and 20th century Spain, and he was also a specialist in Latin American and Swedish history.

At St Antony's, he established an Iberian Centre, of which he was co-director with Joaquin Romero Maura. Paul Preston wrote in 1984 of their collaboration "Between them, Carr and Romero Maura instilled an intellectual rigour into modern Spanish historiography which had previously been conspicuously lacking." Carr also wrote an extensive foreword to the 1993 edition of The Spanish Labyrinth by Gerald Brenan.

A Fellow of the British Academy since 1978, in 1983 he was awarded the Order of Alfonso X el Sabio by King Juan Carlos of Spain and in 1999 the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences.

Carr wrote for The Spectator in 2007, "I am old-fashioned and aged enough to believe that the best history is the work of the lone individual."

His recreation was fox hunting, about which he has written two books, English Fox Hunting: A History (1976), a comprehensive history of fox-hunting from medieval times, and, with his wife Sara Carr, Fox-Hunting (1982).

Honours Member of the British Academy, 1972 Fellow of the British Academy, 1978 Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Clubs Beefsteak and Oxford and Cambridge; Visiones de fin de siglo, 1999 Spain: A History (ed.), 2000 El rostro cambiante de Clío (collection of pieces translated into Spanish by Eva Rodríguez Halffter), Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2005

Carr has also written many book reviews for journals, including the New York Review of Books and The Spectator.