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Keith Robbins (1) (1940–2019)

Autor(a) de The First World War

Para outros autores com o nome Keith Robbins, veja a página de desambiguação.

26+ Works 307 Membros 4 Reviews

About the Author

Keith Robbins was formerly Professor of History at Bangor and Glasgow universities in the UK, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales. He has held the posts of President of the Historical Association, and Editor of History. He is the author of over 20 books, 8 edited books and 120 scholarly mostrar mais articles, and is the general editor of 6 major historical series. mostrar menos

Obras de Keith Robbins

The First World War (1984) 54 cópias
The British Isles 1901-1951 (2002) — Autor — 16 cópias

Associated Works

Edwardian England (1982) — Contribuinte — 6 cópias
Welsh history review, vol. 8, no. 3, June 1977 (1977) — Reviewer — 1 exemplar(es)
Welsh history review, vol. 8, no. 4, Dec. 1977 (1977) — Reviewer — 1 exemplar(es)

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Resenhas

Sir Edward Grey is a notable figure in a number of respects. Foremost among them is because of his tenure as British Foreign Secretary, which at eleven years is the longest single period of time anyone has ever held that post. That he served as Foreign Secretary in the years leading up to the First World War makes his tenure even more significant, as by playing a pivotal part in the events that brought Britain into the conflict he shaped the history of not just his own country but that of Europe and the rest of the world.

That Grey proved as influential as he was to the course of events was because of another notable aspect of his career. As Keith Robbins notes, Grey was the last Foreign Secretary who operated with the same independence of action that his predecessors had enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Though his successors would play important roles in shaping Britain’s international policy, none of them would do so with the same degree of autonomy enjoyed by Grey throughout most of his tenure in office.

Such a figure is well deserving of a study of his life and achievements. And this is what Robbins provides in his book, which was the first biography of Grey written with the benefit of access to the public records from his time at the Foreign Office. This helps him to compensate somewhat for the lack of personal papers, the absence of which has made assessing his formative years difficult. Grey’s youth and education are covered in a single chapter, with the narrative slowing down once he enters politics. Yet it is a testament to Robbins’s skill as a biographer that his coverage of Grey’s early life does not feel scanty or inadequate, but conveys a sense of his early life and the influences on it.

Though Grey won election as a Liberal to Parliament at the age of 23 and experienced a rapid rise in the party ranks, Robbins details the conflicted nature of his involvement with politics, as he frequently contemplated leaving it even as he emerged as one of the party’s leading figures on foreign policy. In many ways Grey was a bridge between the party’s past and its future: a descendant of the Whig gentry who nonetheless held progressive positions on such issues as women’s suffrage. That he was widely viewed by many as a potential prime minister reflected the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues, yet Grey himself seemed unwilling to pursue the post given the strain of his career on his fragile health.

Having established a background in foreign policy during his time as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in William Gladstone’s final government, Grey was a natural choice to become Foreign Secretary when the Liberals formed a government in 1905. The chapters on Grey’s time at the Foreign Office take up over half the book, and offer a generally favorable account of Grey’s management of Britain’s foreign relations. Though Robbins draws out the alignments of Grey’s policies, he adopts a chronological approach that highlights the often reactive nature of Grey’s experience in the post. His direction of policy became much more constrained by the outbreak of war in 1914, though Grey soldiered on until the collapse of the Asquith coalition in December 1916 ended his tenure in office.

Overall Robbins’s book provides an excellent overview of Grey’s service in public office. While his book suffers somewhat from a more constrained examination of Grey’s private life and inner motivations this is a natural consequence of the limitations imposed by the available sources, though his abbreviated final chapter on Grey’s post-ministerial career could have been fleshed out more than it was. Nonetheless, Robbins’s book serves as a good starting point for anyone seeking to learn about the Foreign Secretary who played a key role in determining the course of the decades that followed.
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MacDad | Jan 3, 2021 |
Memories of my Alma Mater, and with contributions from people I knew. Tragically dogged in the printing stages by too many typos, but still full of interest to any Lampetarian.
 
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JacobKirckman | Nov 14, 2020 |
Lectures are a form a communication that carry both the weight of scholarship and the immediacy of delivery. They can communicate substantial ideas in an engaging and personal context. Like sermons, when they are committed to print, lectures lose some of their personality. However worthy the lecture, you always have the feeling after reading it that you would much rather have actually been there.

There is a strong impulse, however, behind the publication of the three St George’s Cathedral lectures presented so far. The content of these lectures has been so relevant to WA Anglicans and of such quality, that those who first heard these presentations believed that the ideas should be made available to a wider audience. Indeed, for those who were present, owning a printed copy of the lectures would aid further reflection on the issues raised.

Professor John Tonkin is the editor of the series of printed lectures. Each has been contained in a small booklet of 12 pages each ornamented with a different sketch of St George slaying his dragon, and a photograph of the lecturer.

The first lecture by Professor Keith Robbins, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales ponders the part Cathedrals play in the mission of the Church. Keith Robbins has just published A History of Canterbury Cathedral, and this subject launches the reflections on what cathedrals can be for the Church. At Canterbury, the medieval raison d’être of the Cathedral was to receive pilgrims. Its modern role is to accept tourists without allowing the cathedral’s pattern of worship to be swamped. Professor Robbins shows how the Cathedral has an opportunity to be an open showcase of worship, faith and Christian thinking for the wider public.

In the 1996 lecture, Dr Alister McGrath, Principal of Wycliffe College at Oxford University, contemplates the future of Anglicanism. This is a sharply focussed discussion on the contribution Anglicanism can make to resolving the division in the Church between fundamentalism and liberalism. Dr McGrath underlines the necessity of Anglican Christianity to move away from its Englishness, particularly its “presumption that the church is situated within a largely settled Christian context” (pp.5-6), and to draw strength from the evangelistic energy of African and Asian Anglicanism.

There is a double treat in the 1997 booklet. The Dean of Perth, John Shepherd, writes in each of the series about the purpose of the lectures. However, in this third book, Dr Shepherd’s foreword is a concise and perceptive statement on the nature of liturgy, worth reading in itself. The Dean’s article also provides background information for Canon Michael Perham’s lecture on “Liturgical Principle and Cathedral Practice”.

Canon Perham begins with a helpful distinction: “Worship,” he writes, “is the offering of ourselves, our souls and bodies, to God. Liturgy is that corpus of words, gestures, forms and rules that give shape to our worship.” (p.1) He continues then to unfold the principles by which liturgy gives expression to our worship, emphasising the possibility that the Holy Spirit will touch us, not through the liturgy, so much as through our self-offering. Fr Perham warns of the ever-present dangers of clericalism, and demonstrates ways in which liturgy enables the worship of all present, not just those presiding. The six ways in which a cathedral may be assisted in its ministry by these liturgical principles are simple and powerful. Cathedrals have the responsibility to know why their liturgy is the way it is. They have the opportunity to offer many different experiences of liturgy and space. Cathedrals can offer their bishop with the setting and the support to develop their episcopal ministry. Cathedrals have the means to be guardians of the breadth of tradition. They are conservative, but not just of one skewed part of tradition. They are also laboratories where engagement with the arts, challenging and life-giving new liturgies can be developed. Cathedrals exist to proclaim the priority of worship, “deep, loving, longing communion with the eternal trinity, grasping the heel of heaven”. (p.11)

These three lectures are a concise and simple introduction to clear academic thinking about the Church, its mission and worship. Because they were presented in our city and in our Cathedral, that thinking is shaped to some extent by our context, and so they provoke a local response from the readers.

© Ted Witham 1997
First published in Anglican Messenger1997
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TedWitham | Mar 23, 2008 |
Keith Robbins provides an excellent introduction to Winston Churchill's dramatic rise to power and traces the unpredictable way his career moved between triumph and tragedy. Brilliant, flawed and distrusted in his early career, he rose to become a national hero in the dark days of the Second World War. Yet after the war, Churchill was ousted from power and by 1955, eclipsed by the US and USSR, Britain seemed to be losing everything Churchill had sought to preserve. Providing a vivid picture of the political landscapes through which he moved, it outlines his career and uncovers what made possible Churchill's leading role in national and world affairs. Keith Robbins shows how Churchill's triumphs and tragedies as a statesman were inseparable from those of the nation as a whole. It explains how the Second World War transformed him into a national hero and looks at his loss of power and his defiance in defeat.… (mais)
 
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antimuzak | Oct 22, 2006 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
26
Also by
3
Membros
307
Popularidade
#76,700
Avaliação
½ 3.5
Resenhas
4
ISBNs
66
Idiomas
4

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