Newspaper Article

Obituary: Norman Hampson: Revisionist historian of the French Revolution

Doyle, William

2011

Overview

Established in a grand house near to the campus, [Norman Hampson] and [Jacqueline Gardin] became famous for their entertaining, with magnificent French food and wine, although in his commitment to crosswords, gardening and cricket, the pipe-smoking Norman could hardly have seemed more quintessentially British. In France, however, which the Hampsons and their two daughters visited each year to see their family, he spoke the language fluently and lectured easily without notes. Elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1980 (modestly but misleadingly claiming \"it goes with the job\"), he was also the unanimous choice of the newly founded Society for the Study of French History in 1987 to be its first president. Though he formally retired from York the next year, he continued to write and teach at the university until his late 70s. Only with the death of Jacqueline in 2007 did his intellectual energy begin to flag. In a field of history that has always aroused strong passions and fierce disagreements, Norman was never confrontational. Like his favourite Enlightenment writer, Montesquieu, he enjoyed an argument, loved a paradox and preferred to make his points by irony rather than polemic. Accordingly he made no enemies. Yet he was a man of deep convictions, politically liberal and viscerally anti-authoritarian. He hated the totalitarian politics of Rousseau, and could find nothing redeeming in Marat or Saint-Just. Yet he was moved by the appeal of Rousseau's other writings to the deepest human feelings. He was even prepared to concede a \"potential humanity\" to [Maximilien Robespierre].

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Cobb, Richard / Cobban, Alfred / Gardin, Jacqueline / Hampson, Norman / Robespierre, Maximilien