Introduction: Asa Briggs and Public Life in Britain since 1945

Abstract

In the annals of British public life since the end of the Second World War, few names stand out as prominently as that of Asa Briggs. A pioneering and best-selling historian, an architect of the new universities of the 1960s, the chronicler of the BBC, a champion of adult education, and a mover and shaker in the arts at home and in the internationalisation of British academia, Briggs has left his mark in many ways. Any one of his principal achievements — his contribution to Victorian studies, or his role in the founding years of the University of Sussex, or his history of the BBC — would suffice for most academic lifetimes. Yet, blessed with a famous energy and a restless intelligence, Briggs has accomplished so much more in his career. He has written at least 30 books, and four times as many articles and chapters.1 In addition to Sussex, he has led the history department at Leeds, been Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, and Chancellor of the Open University. His capacity for public service is legend, almost spanning the alphabet from the Advisory Board for Redundant Churches to the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), and including significant spells with the British Film Institute, the Leverhulme Trust (whose history he wrote) and the Universities Grants Committee. Aptly, he has been called the ‘Macaulay of the welfare state’.2