Professor Peter D.G. Thomas

The History is extremely sad to hear of the recent death of Peter D.G. Thomas (1930-2020), formerly professor of history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, who contributed a large number of articles on Welsh MPs and constituencies for both the 1715-54 and 1754-90 House of Commons sections.

The last research student to be supervised by Sir Lewis Namier, Peter published extensively on eighteenth-century parliamentary history, commencing with his path-breaking 1971 study The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century. He went on to produce a series of important works on the politics of the 1760s and '70s, including a biography of the prime minister Lord North and one of the most important studies of the radical politician John Wilkes: John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty (1996).

Peter continued to research long after retiring from his university chair, and as recently as 2018 published in Parliamentary History an article throwing new light on the early career of Charles James Fox, which exemplified the virtues of thorough research and scrupulous scholarship that characterize all his historical writings.