Kmflett's Blog

Norman Stone 8 March 1941 – 19 June 2019

Norman Stone the right-wing historian has died aged 78.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Stone

Stone, known in his time as Stone Age, was a Thatcherite who both wrote speeches for the Tory leader and wrote a controversial column in the Sunday Times. In a sense he is part of social history himself now.

A history Professor at Oxford in the 1980s he played a broadly similar role in terms of promoting right-wing ideas, historically focused, as Niall Ferguson now does. However Ferguson’s reputation is arguably rather more substantial than Stone’s was.

Stone had a solid background in research history and is a reminder if one is needed that the historical Establishment in Britain is, on the whole, very much on the right, despite the advances of women’s history and the more limited impact of socialist history.

Stone was known to like a drink and I don’t recall ever seeing him when he did not appear to have had one or two. However he was a speaker who you could not but engage with, pithy points and thoughts kept on coming.

I remember him particularly at a History, the Nation and the Schools conference organised by History Workshop at Ruskin College in 1990. I criticised the decision to invite Stone (The History Workshop Movement, History Workshop Journal 1991). The substance pf my criticism was that while the presence of Stone provided some entertaining historical theatre, it possibly didn’t help a more serious discussion on the subject of history teaching in schools, a subject MPs were debating again in Parliament this week.

He leaves a legacy of some decent historical research and a reminder that it is not just the left who politicise history but the right too.