Ronald Hutton
Ronald Hutton | |
|---|---|
 Hutton in 2002 | |
| Born | Ronald Edmund Hutton 19 December 1953 Ootacamund, India |
| Occupations | Historian, author |
| Known for | The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (1991), The Rise and Fall of Merry England (1994), The Stations of the Sun (1996), The Triumph of the Moon (1999), Shamans (2001) |
| Title | Professor of History |
| Honours | Coote Lake Medal |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA) Magdalen College, Oxford (DPhil) |
| Thesis | The Royalist war effort in Wales and the West Midlands, 1642–1646 (1980) |
| Hugh Trevor-Roper | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
Sub-discipline | English folklore, pre-Christian religion, contemporary Paganism |
| Institutions | University of Bristol |
alma_mater which should be merged into education.Ronald Edmund Hutton CBE FSA FRHistS FLSW FBA (born 19 December 1953) is an Indian-born English historian specialising in early modern Britain, British calendar customs, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol and Gresham College, Hutton has written over a dozen books and often appears on British television and radio.
Born in Ootacamund, India, Hutton returned to England as a child, where he attended school in Ilford. Interested in archaeology, he volunteered on various excavations. He studied history at Pembroke College, Cambridge and then took a DPhil at Magdalen College, Oxford, before securing a position at the University of Bristol in 1981. Specialising in early modern Britain, he wrote four books on the subject: The Royalist War Effort (1981), The Restoration (1985), Charles the Second (1989), and The British Republic (1990). He followed these with three books on Britain's pre-Christian religions and calendar customs: The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (1991), The Rise and Fall of Merry England (1994), and The Stations of the Sun (1996). These were followed by The Triumph of the Moon (1999), an examination of Wicca's history which would receive praise as a seminal text in Pagan studies.
After Shamans (2001), which considered Western perceptions of Siberian shamanism, Hutton focused on the role of the druids in the British imagination, producing two books, The Druids (2007) and Blood and Mistletoe (2009). Revising his earlier approach to pre-Christian religion with Pagan Britain (2013), he then addressed witchcraft for The Witch (2017) before beginning work on a three-volume biography of Oliver Cromwell (2021-24). In addition to appearing in various television documentaries, he fronted his own series, Professor Hutton's Curiosities, in 2013. After 2009 he also became a commissioner and then a trustee of English Heritage, a chair of the organisation's blue plaque committee, and academic advisor for their development of the Stonehenge visitor centre. In 2022 he became Gresham Professor of Divinity.
Hutton's work has brought recognition from a range of institutions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Society of Antiquaries of London, Learned Society of Wales and the British Academy, and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He has also become a popular figure in the British Pagan community and has received honours from the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.