George Kitson Clark


George Sidney Roberts Kitson Clark was an English historian, specialising in the nineteenth century.

Historian

George Kitson Clark was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lived the life of a bachelor don as Fellow of Trinity, from 1922 to 1975. He was Reader in Constitutional History from 1954 to 1967.
He is known as a revisionist historian of the Repeal of the Corn Laws. G. D. H. Cole identified a "Kitson Clark" school of historians revising the assessment of the Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartists. He delivered the Ford Lectures in 1959–60, speaking on "The Making of Victorian England".
Jack Plumb, who disliked Kitson Clark, describes him as a reformer of the History Tripos, and obstacle to Lewis Namier, with various swipes.

Family

He was the son of the engineer Edwin Kitson Clark, and brother of Mary Kitson Clark. His paternal grandfather was E. C. Clark, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge.

Works