J. M. Roberts

J. M. Roberts was born in Bath and educated at Taunton School and Keble College, Oxford. After National Service he returned to Oxford in 1950 and became a Fellow of Magdalen the following year. In 1953 he went to the United States as Commonwealth Fund Fellow, the first of several visits to America during which he held, among other posts, those of Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1960), and visiting professorships at the University of South Carolina and Columbia University, New York. He was a Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, Oxford, from 1953 to 1979. From 1979 to 1985 he was Vice-Chancellor of Southampton University. He then returned to the Wardenship of Merton in 1985, from which he retired in 1994. In 1996 he was appointed CBE for 'services to education and history'.

Dr Roberts edited the popular and successful partwork publication Purnell's History of the Twentieth Century. From 1967 to 1976 he was joint editor of the English Historical Review. He is the author of Europe 1880-1945, The Mythology of the Secret Societies, The Paris Commune from the Right, Revolution and Improvement and The French Revolution. He is General Editor of the New Oxford History of England and the Shorter Oxford History of the Modern World. In 1985 BBC 2 transmitted the thirteen-part historical series The Triumph of the West, which Dr Roberts wrote and presented, and later in the year he published his book of the same title. He was historical adviser to the successful recent BBC television series People's Century.

Dr Roberts is also the author of The Penguin History of Europe and The Penguin History of the World.