Asa Briggs (1921-2016)

[Lat-Literal]

A pioneer who helped to invent the discipline of media history.........

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/15/asa-briggs-historian-higher-education-pioneer-dies-age-94

.........began his career at Bletchley Park...............

http://www.historytoday.com/paul-lay/asa-briggs-very-open-intelligence

.......and built upon the achievements of a remarkable woman:

http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/historyofou/story/asa-briggs

(The clip from 1986 shows him as a visionary)

http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/historyofou/story/jennie-lee

“The heroine of the whole story of the OU is Jennie Lee. The idea of it being called the Open University was very much hers”

Asa Briggs RIP

[french frank]

Yes, a true pioneer. And historian of the BBC

[Richard Tarleton]

The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867 - staple of my A level English history in the mid 60s.

A great career.

[Lat-Literal]

Yes, a true pioneer. And historian of the BBC

The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867 - staple of my A level English history in the mid 60s.

A great career.

Yes. All social history students will know of Asa Briggs from their time at school and university. I do. Labour through and through* - and scathing about the absence of interest in history among recent politicians - he regarded Attlee as having been the best Prime Minister in modern times. However, he also proof read for Churchill and, of course, he worked alongside Turing at Bletchley Park. He was radical but not, I would suggest, an anti-establishment figure. I am not particularly familiar with his histories on broadcasting - one of which was written as early as the mid 1950s. I'm more aware of his writing on Chartism which emphasised the significance of its localism. That can be read with interest alongside the case studies in Gammage, the early work of Cole and the contemporary Royle. A selected bibliography from an extensive list of all of his work is attached below and it looks very appealing. As for Jennie Lee - all aspects of her life and not only the Open University - I recommend her book "My Life With Nye" which is in my favourite bookcase at home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Briggs#Select_bibliography

*Maybe that should read "Historically Labour" - he was a Cross-Bencher in the Lords - and in many ways that seems very apt!

[Richard Tarleton]

He was radical but not, I would suggest, an anti-establishment figure.

He supported Hugh Trevor-Roper's bid to become Regius Professor (I've just been reading Adam Sisman's biog of HT-R). Briggs wrote privately (by this time from Leeds) that there was only one obvious name - Trevor-Roper. "Both Southern and McFarlane were too narrow, and [AJP] Taylor too irresponsible....Briggs's support was especially encouraging, in that he was neither a personal friend nor a natural ally". HT-R very much the establishment figure, AJPT might have been seen as the anti-establishment figure .