Robert Ensor

Sir Robert Charles Kirkwood Ensor (16 October 1877 – 4 December 1958) was a British writer, poet, journalist, liberal intellectual, and historian. He is best known for England: 1870-1914, a volume in the Oxford History of England series edited by George Clark.

Biography

Born in Milborne Port, Dorset, he was the son of Robert H Ensor and his wife Olivia née Currie. Published in 1936 as the final volume, Ensor's book has sold more copies than any other in the original fourteen part series. He was subsequently made a research fellow of Corpus Christi College and a research lecturer of All Souls College in 1937 and a faculty fellow of Nuffield College in 1938.

He was commissioned in 1937 to write a sequel to his volume of the Oxford History of England but he resumed his journalism during the Second World War with a weekly column on foreign affairs in the Sunday Times.

He died in a Beaconsfield nursing home in December 1958, aged 81.