Talks
Lawrence GoldmanDutch Connection in British History: Dutch Lives in the Oxford Dictionary of Nat Biography
Itinerary:
See overlay (Events Calendar)
The illustrated lecture uses the Dictionary as a means of exploring the historic connections between Britain and the Netherlands in both directions, examining the Dutch who came to live and work in Britain from the Reformation onwards, and Britons who visited the Low Countries.
DR. LAWRENCE GOLDMAN has been Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at St. Peter’s College, Oxford since 1990. In 2004 he was made the Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Born in London, he was educated at Cambridge, where he took his BA and PhD degrees. He was also a Harkness Fellow at Yale University where he studied American History. In Oxford he teaches modern British and American History. He has published widely on Victorian social thought (Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain. The Social Science Association 1857-1886, Cambridge University Press, 2002) and on the history of education in Britain (Dons and Workers: Oxford and Adult Education Since 1850, Oxford University Press, 1995). In addition to articles in journals like Past and Present and the English Historical Review, he has edited collections of essays on the life of the Victorian politician and economist, Henry Fawcett (CUP, 1989) and also on Victorian politics and culture (OUP, 2006). Most recently he published a new edition of The Federalist Papers, the collection of more than 80 newspapers articles written in 1787-8 to explain and recommend the American Constitution to the American people (OUP World’s Classics series, 2008).
‘The Dutch Connection in British History: Dutch Lives in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography was published in 2004 and contains biographical essays on more than 55,000 figures in British History. It can be accessed in two formats, in 60 print volumes and also online from the internet. At more than 65 million words it is the largest single publication in the history of the English language. It has been written by more than ten thousand scholars, all experts in their respective fields. It has won several prizes, including in 2007 the Queen’s Anniversary Award for Higher Education.
Among many subjects in the Oxford DNB there are some 728 people who at some stage in their lives resided in the Netherlands, including 173 who were born there (from Florence V, count of Holland, 1254-1296, claimant to the Scottish throne, to Max Geldray, the harmonica player who played on the famous BBC radio ‘Goon Show’), and more than two hundred figures who died there.
The illustrated lecture uses the Dictionary as a means of exploring the historic connections between Britain and the Netherlands in both directions, examining the Dutch who came to live and work in Britain from the Reformation onwards, and Britons who visited the Low Countries. Some of these figures, such as Erasmus or William of Orange, are very well-known in British history; others are less so.
By using the Oxford DNB it is possible to throw light on relatively unfamiliar figures in the Anglo-Dutch relationship, from engineers and artists to musicians and scientists.
The lecture is informative and educative, but also light-hearted and fun, and thus suitable for a general audience. The Oxford DNB is full of surprising, remarkable and eccentric people, as well as ‘the great and the good’.