Davis, Graham 1943-

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DAVIS, Graham 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born May 8, 1943, in Cheltenham, England; son of Frederick (a grocer) and Catherine (a grocer; maiden name, Maddocks) Davis; married Elizabeth Mountford (a nursery school proprietor), July 24, 1965; children: Matthew, Adam, Benjamin, Samuel. Ethnicity: "British." Education: University of Birmingham, B.A. (with honors), 1965; University of Bath, M.Sc., 1975, Ph.D., 1981. Hobbies and other interests: Theater, music, sport.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Weston Park House, Weston Park, Bath BA1 4AL, England. Office—School of Historical and Cultural Studies, Bath Spa University College, Newton Park, Bath BA2 9BN, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Shirebrook Comprehensive School, Shirebrook, Derbyshire, England, assistant history master, 1965-68; Bath Spa University College, Bath, England, lecturer, 1968-74, senior lecturer, 1974-85, principal lecturer, 1985-93, reader in Irish studies, 1994—, course director, 1985—. Guest lecturer at institutions, including Texas A & M University, University of Plymouth, University of the West of England, Southern Illinois University, National University of Ireland, University College, Cork, and University of Texas; speaker for National Trust, Historical Association, Bath Museum Service, and British television and radio programs; presenter of public lectures; historical consultant to filmmakers.

MEMBER:

Social History Society, American Conference for Irish Studies, Southern History Society.

WRITINGS:

The Langtons at Newton Park, 1976, revised edition published as The Langtons at Newton Park, Bath, 1985.

(Editor) Louie Stride, Memoirs of a Street Urchin, Bath University Press (Bath, England), 1985.

Bath beyond the Guide Book: Scenes of Victorian Life, Redcliffe Press (Bristol, England), 1988.

The Irish in Britain, 1815-1914, Gill & Macmillan (Dublin, Ireland), 1991.

(With Penny Bonsall) Bath: A New History, Keele University Press (Keele, England), 1996.

Land! Irish Pioneers in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 2002.

Contributor to books, including The Irish in Britain, 1915-1939, edited by R. Swift and S. Gilley, Pinter Press (London, England), 1989; Slums, edited by M. Gaskell, Pinter Press (London, England), 1990; Irish Writing: Exile and Subversion, edited by P. Hyland and N. Sammels, Macmillan (London, England), 1991; Community and Conflict in Southern England, edited by B. Stapleton, Alan Sutton (London, England), 1992; and The Irish Diaspora, edited by Andy Bielenberg, Addison Wesley Longman (Reading, MA), 2000.

Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Avon Conservation News, Wessex Heritage, Saothar, Irish Studies Review, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, and Local Historian.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Bath, with Penny Bonsall, for Carnegie Publishing (Lancaster, England); a trilogy of plays, The Scum of Bath, Pure Water, and Vice and Vigilance.

SIDELIGHTS:

Graham Davis told CA: "I suppose my primary motivation for writing stems from a curiosity about people and places in the past, a fascination with historical documents, the spark to the imagination from old buildings, and looking back on what I write—the appeal of a story. In whatever guise I am writing—local history, social history, migration history, or even now beginning to dabble in the writing of plays—I construct a narrative, imposing a meaning and an explanation on people, events, and situations.

"I have always been a teacher, starting in a secondary school, but mostly to undergraduates and postgraduates in higher education. It has been my privilege and pleasure to teach courses built around my research interests. This has allowed me to use material that I have quarried from primary sources and to engage with students in discussion of issues in current scholarship. Essential to teaching is the communication of knowledge, enthusiasm, and the skills involved in research and writing.

"My work is influenced by a tradition of academic historians reaching out to the intelligent lay person. Historians draw on the materials deposited in public libraries and record offices, and so have a duty to put their work into the public domain. This obligation influences the way I write, with a minimum of jargon or academic pedantry and a desire to write with authority and clarity.

"In the research phase, I make copious notes from primary and secondary sources, photocopy key documents and journal articles. These are then sorted into folders and files related to the structure of the work. When the research phase is well advanced, I construct a writing schedule which, for a full-length book, would be spread out over three years. The draft of a chapter is usually written in longhand on a lined pad of paper. It soon has multiple scorings, crossings-out, and substitute phrases. The second draft is done on my laptop computer, producing clean copy that can be edited easily. Third and fourth drafts are usually about cutting, streamlining, and polishing the prose for pace and clarity. The final draft looks at the development of argument across the chapters, taking the work as a whole, finalizing notes and references, and the placing of illustrations and maps.

"My inspiration comes from serendipity and an instinct for a story. My first piece of sustained research was prompted by the discovery of a parish chest of old documents inside a church. It was a challenge to make the documents come alive and try to explain what happened to a village community. It led to my master's dissertation. My doctoral thesis was prompted by reading a description of an infamous slum street in Bath. The challenge was to expose the contemporary reputation and construct an alternative and more complicated reality. Having discovered an Irish colony in Avon Street, Bath, I was invited by a Dublin publisher to write a book on the Irish in Britain, and having written about Avon Street, I was invited to write a book on the history of Bath. Recently I have been invited to coauthor a more expansive book on Bath.

"Perhaps the most bizarre example of serendipity is my book on the Irish in Texas. This started on a bus in Galway in Ireland, where I found myself talking to a lady from Texas who invited me to come and visit, to explore the potential for a new study. If it had not been raining outside and the tour guide had not been struggling to explain the landscape, shrouded in mist, I may not have spoken to her, or heard of the Irish in Texas, or gone to the United States for the first time. It turned out to be the most exciting and rewarding adventure of my life."