Professor Arthur Geoffrey Dickens

Attended Hymers College:

1921 - 1929

What makes this nominee inspiring?

A most distinguished academic historian and writer and is author of acclaimed book 'The English Reformation'. He wrote and published many other books as well as academic papers, many though not all on the Reformation, the Counter Reformation in continental Europe and related topics. His first book, a general topography of the East Riding with Hull and York' published 1954, remains the only really good such book on our (pre-1974 mutilation thousand years old) Riding. After returning from WW2 service he was appointed professor of history at the University of Hull, later becoming deputy principal and dean of the Faculty of Arts, 1950–53, and pro-vice-chancellor, 1959–62. He took up the post of professor of history at King's College London in 1962, where he remained until becoming director of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) and professor of history in the University of London, 1967–77. He was also active in other bodies, including being president of the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1966–68; a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records, 1968–76; an advisor to the Council on the Export of Works of Art, 1968–76; secretary, chairman and general secretary of the British National Committee of Historical Sciences, 1967–79; foreign secretary of the British Academy, 1969–79; and vice-president of the British Record Society, 1978–80. He enjoyed "a deep love affair with Germany" as a result of his postwar experience there as well as pre-war visits, and was a moving force in the establishment of the German Historical Institute in London and was decorated by the German government. He died in London at the age of 91. A man of wide culture, he built up and then sold a distinguished collection of Dutch Old Masters, replacing them with a collection of 20th-century British paintings, most of which he presented to the University of Hull in 1980.