History And Biography

I *HIS collection of essays, by friends, colleagues and former students, isJL presented to Derek Beales to mark and to celebrate his sixty-fifthbirthday. It is at least doubly appropriate that it should be calledHistory and Biography. For not only was this the title of his inaugural lectureas Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, which is reprintedhere: it also describes his range and defines his accomplishments as a scholar.Few historians today trouble themselves with large-scale, full-dress biographies.Even fewer biographers write anything that is recognisable as serioushistory. Derek Beales, by contrast, may justly claim to be both a distinguishedhistorian and a gifted biographer. He has written national history, internationalhistory, political history, constitutional history, ecclesiastical historyand cultural history. For four years, he taught a Special Subject on Gladstone'sFirst Ministry in Part Two of the Cambridge Historical Tripos. And he is stillengaged on his major work: a magisterial biography of the Emperor Joseph II.As all his writing makes plain, Derek Beales is fascinated by the interplaybetween men and events, individuals and circumstance. He is sceptical ofimpersonal and structural history, and he has never favoured debunkingor mocking biography. And he is as much an historiographer as he is anhistorian. Not for nothing was the alternative title for his inaugural lecture'Historians as Great Men, and Great Men as Historians'