Cambridge Professor to Speak at UA March 20

A University of Cambridge history professor who has explored the “religious psychology” of Oliver Cromwell will visit The University of Alabama campus to give a talk on the 17th-century English ruler.

Dr. John Morrill, professor of British and Irish history at the English university, will present “Rewriting Cromwell: A Case of Deafening Silences” on Wednesday, March 20, at 7:30 p.m. in UA’s Ferguson Theater. The talk is part of UA’s Bankhead Lecture Series, The Art of Biography. Admission is free, and the public is invited.

Morrill’s current research centers on the political, religious, social and cultural histories of England, Ireland and Scotland from the late 15th to the mid-18th centuries. He is examining the changing relationship between governments within Britain, Ireland and their adjacent islands and is undertaking a series of detailed case studies of the “religious psychology” of several people who lived through the civil wars — most notably Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell governed England as Lord Protector from 1653-1658. A military leader, Cromwell is remembered as a leader of the English Revolution, as the first commoner to rule England and for his Calvinistic religious beliefs.

Morrill has written and edited 19 books. He was the general editor of the “Royal Historical Society Bibliography on CD-ROM: the History of Britain, Ireland and the British Overseas,” (a contents-indexed listing of 249,000 books, articles and essays in collective volumes), and he is consultant editor for the 6,300 17th-century lives in the “New Dictionary of National Biography.”

In 1982, the Bankhead family established the Bankhead Endowment Fund to further the interests of historical research and scholarly activity within the history department in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences. In recent years, the family expanded the original commission to bring visiting lecturers to campus and to further promote the teaching and study of history.

To arrange an interview with Morrill prior to his talk, e-mail him at jsm1000@hermes.cam.ac.uk