We are delighted to share the news that Professor Anthony Milton FBA of the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities has been appointed to the prestigious role of Ford Lecturer for the University of Oxford.
- Professor Anthony Milton is the first member of the University of Sheffield to ever be elected to the prestigious role of Ford Lecturer for the University of Oxford. Anthony will be delivering the 2027 lectures.
- The Ford Lectures in British History have been established as the most prestigious series in Oxford, electing those considered to be top of their field to present their work.
- Professor Anthony Milton's research explores religious, cultural and political relations between Britain and mainland Europe between 1560 and 1660. He is currently completing a study of the life and career of Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford (1593-1641) and the relationship between language, image and power in early modern English and Irish politics. His next project is a study of the uses of anonymity in early modern print and manuscript culture.
The Ford Lectures in British History were inaugurated in 1896-7, and have long been established as the most prestigious series in Oxford. While the Ford Lecturer is often a distinguished visitor from elsewhere in the United Kingdom or further afield, this is the first time in the history of the lectures that a member of the University of Sheffield has been elected. The Lectures are an opportunity for distinguished scholars to present their work and they invariably result in important books, many of them classic and pioneering works of British history. Anthony will be delivering the 2027 lecture series.
It is a great honour for me personally, but I think it also reflects a broader recognition in the UK (and even in the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’!) that Sheffield is a place where internationally important and innovative history is being researched, written and taught.
Professor Anthony Milton
FBA of the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Professor Anthony Milton is currently completing a study of the life and career of Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford (1593-1641) and the relationship between language, image and power in early modern English and Irish politics. His wider research explores religious, cultural and political relations between Britain and mainland Europe between 1560 and 1660. His next project is a study of the uses of anonymity in early modern print and manuscript culture.
Anthony’s publications include:
Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 (Cambridge, 1995, repr. 1996, 2002) and Laudian and royalist polemic in seventeenth-century England: the career and writings of Peter Heylyn (2007, repr. 2013).
Anthony edited The Oxford History of Anglicanism Volume 1: Reformation and Identity c.1520-1662 (Oxford, 2017).
Anthony’s latest book -- England’s Second Reformation: the battle for the Church of England 1625-1662 (Cambridge, 2021) – argues that the 1640s, 1650s and early 1660s constituted a 'second reformation' as important as the more famous Tudor reformations, when the identity of the Church of England was fundamentally reshaped in the crucible of civil war, interregnum and the restoration of the monarchy.
For Anthony’s full publication list and to find out more about him, visit his profile.
For more information about the James Ford Lectures in British History, you can visit the .