Hill, Christopher (1910– )

Hill, Christopher (1910– ), British historian. Christopher Hill is recognized in Great Britain as the foremost historian of the English Revolution (1640–1660), its origins and its aftermath. Hill's numerous books and essay collections examine the Revolution not only from the perspectives of those who engineered it, but also from the position of common citizens, radical religious fringe groups, the expanding mercantile class, and seminal writers such as John Milton and Gerrard Winstanley.

Although New York Review of Books correspondent J. P. Kenyon claims that Hill made "a spectacular leap to the very apex of the academic establishment," the more common view of Hill's career holds that the historian achieved prominence through his more than forty years of contributions to his field. John Brewer recalls that Hill was "an early member of what was to become the most important and influential group of historians in Britain after World War II," an association that "emanated not from an academic institution but a political party." Brewer refers to the Historians' Study Group of the British Communist Party, an organization that encouraged socialist and Marxist writing within the universities. When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956, Hill and many of his colleagues withdrew from the British Communist Party, expressing their dissatisfaction with Soviet policy. Hill did not abandon the task of writing socialist history, however. According to David Underdown, the scholar "has always emphasized that two distinct groups were central in transforming early modern English society: the 'industrious sort of people' or 'middling sort,' . . . and the radical intellectuals. . . . The period of Hill's greatest influence was probably during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when university students (and many of their elders) on both sides of the Atlantic found in his work inspiring echoes of their visions of a freer cultural and social order, and a sense of being sustained by a tradition of radical criticism stretching back over the centuries."

"The age of the Puritan Revolution must now be regarded as 'Hill's half-century,' " writes New York Review of Books contributor Lawrence Stone, "and for years to come students will be testing, confirming, modifying, or rejecting his hypotheses. It is given to few historians to achieve such intellectual dominance over their chosen field, for it requires sustained capacity for taking pains in the drudgery of research, a fertile and facile pen, and tremendous imaginative powers. Together, these are the marks of the great historian." Philip Rosenberg feels that with so many scholars "tending to treat their subjects as grist for their intellectual mills," Christopher Hill's "more humanistic approach is a valuable asset in no small part responsible for his preeminence among contemporary historians." Having retired as master of Balliol in 1978, Hill continues to write and lecture on aspects of the English Revolution and its ramifications for the history of modern Europe. According to Kenyon in the Washington Post Book World, Hill's "feel for the English language, the great breadth of his reading, and his patient and compassionate understanding of human eccentricity, make it possible for us to understand through him something of the feelings and emotions of these extraordinary men and women who peopled 'the Puritan Revolution.' "

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