Background
Parkes was born on Guernsey in the Channel Islands at the end of the nineteenth century and educated at Elizabeth College.
Parkes was born on Guernsey in the Channel Islands at the end of the nineteenth century and educated at Elizabeth College.
His life"s work amounted not only to hundreds of articles and twenty-three books, among them The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (1934), his magnum opus, but also to social activism. Upon his return to England, he carved out a career as an independent scholar. Parkes contributed to several British publications, including The Observer, The Jewish Chronicle, Punch and Peace News.
He bequeathed his Judaica collection to the University of Southampton where it became the cornerstone of the Parkes Jewish Library and the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/Christian Relations.
He also wrote Common sense about religion, as part of the Common Sense series.
lieutenant was there that he grew aware of the brutality of antisemitism and very early on spoke out about Nazism, surviving an assassination attempt in 1935.
