Professor FML Thompson
Historian who specialised in the study of land ownership and how it affected changes in society
PROFESSOR F M L THOMPSON, the distinguished historian who has died aged 92, was a lecturer in history and then a reader in economic history at University College London from 1951, professor of history at Bedford College, University of London, from 1968, and director of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) from 1977 to 1990.
These jobs were all conferred upon him: Thompson must have been the last of the generation of academics who never had to actually apply for a job.
Michael Thompson was a research student at Oxford in 1951 when he was summoned to UCL by the Elizabethan historian Professor Sir John Neale. He had been researching the question of whether the landed aristocracy and landed gentry lost political power after the Great Reform Act of 1832 for his Dphil when Neale’s Oxford agents flagged him up.
At UCL he was interviewed by Neale and a room full of Neale’s professorial colleagues. After the questioning, Neale said: “So, Thompson, what do you think about joining us?” Rather hard of hearing, Thompson thought he had been asked “What would you say to a cup of tea?”, and responded he was sorry he could not stay for tea since he had a train to catch at Paddington.
He always maintained afterwards that he was appointed by Neale out of guilt for not offering him a cup of tea. He loved his time in the Department of History at UCL, but he did not love Neale. He resented Neale’s insistence that junior lecturers in the department all attend his seminar in Tudor history at the Institute of Historical Research, regardless of their own fields of interest.
In 1968 he was tempted away to be a professor and head of the department of history at Bedford College, now merged with Royal Holloway College, but then splendidly located in Regent’s Park at St John’s Lodge, the former London villa of the Marquis of Bute, with a sprung ballroom for a lecture hall. There were, as it seemed, frequent summer parties with Pene Corfield (18th and 19th centuries) producing delicious Vichyssoise and Caroline Barron (medieval) with a bottle in each hand asking guests if they preferred Claret or Burgundy.
Meanwhile, Conrad (later Earl) Russell (17th century) could often be glimpsed playing cricket in the agreeable staff vs student matches in Regent’s Park.
Soon after becoming director of the IHR, Thompson was visited by one of the first academic delegations from China. The representative of the British Council withdrew, leaving Thompson with the Chinese historians. He outlined the current state of British historiography and asked how he could help them. The Chinese leader said he would most like to meet JH Clapham. Thompson had to explain that Sir John Clapham had died in 1946. The next visitor said he was most keen to pay his respects to RH Tawney, and Thompson regretted to tell him that Tawney had died in 1962. The third request was to meet Sir Michael Postan; Thompson said he was sorry to tell them that he had died the previous week.
Thompson’s academic advancement was marked by several important books and other publications. His first book was his English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (1963). His Hampstead: Building a Borough, 1650-1964 (1974) showed how suburban growth was determined by the ownership of the previous fields.
The three volumes he edited of The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950 (1990) reveal a mature subject, confidently handled. Shortly before his death, two volumes of his articles and essays were published as English Landed Society Revisited (2017). In 1996 he had received a festschrift edited by Negley Harte and Roland Quinault.
Besides writing, Thompson was co-editor of the Economic History Review from 1968 to 1979, first with DC Coleman and then with BE Supple. His abilities were not just literary, they were quantitative too; he could spot at sight a column of percentages that did not add up to 100.
He became president in turn of each of the three leading national societies in his field – the Economic History Society (1983-86); the Royal Historical Society (1988-92); and the British Agricultural History Society (1989-92). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1979 and appointed CBE in 1992.
Francis Michael Longstreth Thompson published under his initials, but he was known as Michael (and to a few intimates as Mike). He was born on August 13 1925, the son of Francis Longstreth Thompson (1890-1973), a town planner of distinction. Both his father and his mother came from a line of Quakers. Michael went to Bootham School in York. He then went to Queen’s College, Oxford, for a wartime year, to begin to read History.
His Oxford period was interrupted by four years’ service as an officer in the Indian Artillery, engaged in liberating Sumatra and suppressing disorder in what was to become Bangladesh. He saw no paradox in being a Quaker and an Army officer; he believed the war to be a just war.
Back in Oxford in 1947 he resumed his studies, and then in 1949 he moved to Merton College to become a research student, supervised first by the emerging figure of Asa Briggs. Thompson admired Briggs for his opening up of new avenues of social history, and for his ability to continue writing his Age of Improvement while conducting supervisions.
When in 1950 Hrothgar Habakkuk – later Sir John – arrived in Oxford from Cambridge as the brilliant new professor of economic history, Thompson fell under his influence, partly because of their mutual interest in land ownership, but he was also drawn to Habakkuk’s sharp intellectual clarity.
Michael Thompson was a man of much boyish charm and modesty. He brought together qualities all too rarely combined in academic life: he was very clever and he was very nice.
After his move to London in 1951, he married Anne Challoner, with whom he led a happy family life in Wheathampstead, playing vigorous tennis, growing vegetables, gardening, walking dogs, tolerating ponies – the origin of his special interest in the history of horse-drawn society. He died in hospital, surrounded by his family, virtually deaf and blind, but lucid to the end.
His wife survives him with their two sons and a daughter.
Professor F M L Thompson, born August 13 1925, died August 23 2017