Professor Sir Richard J. Evans

Professor Sir Richard J. Evans is a world-renowned historian and academic, with many of his books now acknowledged as seminal works in the field of modern history. He specializes in 19th and 20th century European history, with a particular focus on Germany. He has authored numerous influential books, including the acclaimed three-volume “The Third Reich Trilogy.” He served as Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge from 2008 to 2014 and was President of Wolfson College from 2010 to 2017. Richard was Provost of Gresham College from 2014-2020.

He has been recognized for his contributions to scholarship. Richard was appointed Knight Bachelor in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, for services to scholarship. In 2014 he was awarded the Historical Association’s Norton Medlicott Medal for his ‘outstanding contribution to History’, particularly through his ‘significant’ and ‘robust’ engagement in recent national debates about school curriculum reform and about the teaching and commemoration of the First World War. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1993, an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College (Oxford) since 1998, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 1978 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 2001. He is also an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and Wolfson College, both in Cambridge. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa by London University in 2013 and by Oxford University in 2015. Also in 2015, he was awarded the British Academy Leverhulme Medal and Prize, given every three years for a significant contribution to the humanities and social sciences.

Richard has published 23 books as author and seven as editor. The Third Reich Trilogy sold more than 250,000 copies in English and has been translated into thirteen foreign languages. His most recent books include The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination (2020), Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History (2019) and Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich (2024).

Prior to this, his key publications include: Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent (2009), Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History, and the David Irving Trial (2002), In Defence of History (1997), Rituals of Retribution (1996) and Death in Hamburg (1987), which won the Wolfson History Prize.

Richard has a strong public engagement as an historian, including acting as principal expert witness in the David Irving libel trial before the High Court in London in 2000. He is currently Deputy Chair of the Spoliation Advisory Panel, a non-departmental public body which advises on claims for the return from public museums and galleries in the UK of artworks looted during the Nazi era.

He has lectured extensively all over the world at a variety of literary festivals and events. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary History since 1998 and a judge of the Wolfson History Prize from 1995 until 2025. He is a frequent contributor to the broadcast media and the press.