Robert Colls

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Robert Colls is Emeritus Professor of History at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Early life

He was born in 1949 in South Shields, where he attended Laygate Lane Junior School and the Grammar-Technical School for Boys. His father worked as a driller at the Tyne Dock Engineering Company, a ship repair yard. His mother worked at Harton Hospital as a ward assistant. He has a younger brother.

After studying at the University of Sussex and undertaking Voluntary Service Overseas in Blue Nile Province, Sudan, he earned his PhD at the University of York under Professor G. A. Williams.

Career

He worked at Loughton College (1975–79), and then at the University of Leicester (1979-2012), as Professor of English History before, in October 2012, joining the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, also in Leicester.

Main interests

Colls's main interests are cultural and intellectual history. He has also worked on the history of the English working class. His essay "When We Lived in Communities" (Cities of Ideas Routledge 2004) explored the intelligence that sustained industrial communities.^{[citation needed]} This, and his "English Journeys" (Prospect July 2007) and "Death of a Church" (New Statesman 20 Mar 2024), are the nearest he has come to memoir.

Journalism

He writes regularly for New Statesman and The Literary Review.

He has written a hefty piece for Transactions of the Royal Historical Society on the craft of writing history (forthcoming).

He has written and broadcast for television and radio, including The South Bank Show (on Lee Hall), Who Do You Think You Are? (on Alan Carr), Analysis (on the English Gentleman), The Verb (on intellectuals), In Our Time (on Animal Farm), From Our Own Correspondent (on France and the USA), Ramblings (with Clare Balding in the steps of the Jarrow Marchers), The Matter of the North (with Melvyn Bragg), Start the Week (on Orwell), Newsnight (on Brexit), A House Through Time (with David Olusuga), British Council (Durham Miners’ Gala), GNR Films (Great North Run), Unherd (on Levelling Up), The Rest is History (on Orwell, and 'The Fight of the Century'), and Radio Free Europe (on Orwell).

He has contributed to German, French, Spanish, US and Italian TV, newspapers and radio on subjects ranging from English regionalism and Scottish independence to Brexit and Leicester City's crowning as English Champions in 2016.