'David Cannadine' (born
1950) is a
British historian, known for a number of books including ''The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy'' and ''Ornamentalism''; and as a commentator and broadcaster on British public life, especially the
British monarchy.
As of 2004 he is engaged in a biography of
Andrew Mellon and the nineteenth-century volume in the New Penguin History of Britain. (He is also the general editor of this series, and of the Penguin History of Europe.)
He was born in
Birmingham. He read history at
Clare College, Cambridge, and wrote a doctorate while at
St John's College, Oxford, supervised by
Peter Mathias, also spending time at
Princeton University. In 1975 he became a Fellow of
Christ's College, Cambridge, and a University Lecturer.
From 1992 he was Moore Collegiate Professor of History at
Columbia University. In 1998 he became director of the
Institute of Historical Research,
University of London, and in 2003 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Professor of British History there.
He married the historian
Linda Colley in 1982.
Works
★ ''Lords and Landlords; the aristocracy and the towns, 1774-1967'', (1980)
★ ''Patricians, Power and Politics in nineteenth-century Towns'', (1982) (editor)
★ ''The Pleasures of the Past'', (1991)
★ ''
G.M. Trevelyan: A Life in History'' (1992)
★ ''Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain'' (1994)
★ ''The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy'' (1996)
★ ''The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain'' (1998)
★ ''History in Our Time'' (1998)
★ ''Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire'' (2001)
★ ''In Churchill's Shadow: Confronting the Past in Modern Britain'' (2002)