Seton-Watson, Christopher 1918–2007

(Christopher Ivan William Seton-Watson)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 6, 1918, in London, England; died September 8, 2007. Historian, educator, and author. After a period of distinguished military service during World War II, for which he was awarded England's Military Cross, Seton-Watson spent a thirty-five-year career at Oriel College, Oxford. His service had taken him to Italy, where he fell under the spell of the Mediterranean country and devoted the next two decades to studying its history. Seton-Watson was particularly interested in the events that contributed to the transformation of a liberal nation, which it was in the late 1800s, into the fascist state that it became in the first part of the twentieth century. In 1967 he published Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870-1925. At the time it was one of only a few English-language studies devoted to that period of history. Though he wrote only the one historical study, Seton-Watson spent many years enjoying the Italian countryside, and he was a founding member of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy. Seton-Watson was named a commander of the Italian Order of Merit in 1984. His memoir,Dunkirk, Alamein, Bologna: Letters and Diaries of an Artilleryman, 1939-1945, was published in 1993.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Seton-Watson, Christopher,Dunkirk, Alamein, Bologna: Letters and Diaries of an Artilleryman, 1939-1945, Buckland (London, England), 1993.

PERIODICALS

Times(London, England), October 5, 2007, p. 67.