Background

Sir Richard William Southern was born on February 8, 1912, in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. He was the second of four children of Matthew Henry, a timber merchant, and Elizabeth Eleanor Southern.

Education

R. W. Southern studied at Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne and at Balliol College in Oxford. While at Balliol, he fostered a love for medieval history, assisted in no small part by the influence of his tutor, Vivian Galbraith. Following the completion of his first degree, he was offered and accepted a junior research fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford.

Career

Having held the fellowship for four years, in 1937 Southern succeeded Galbraith at Balliol as fellow and tutor in medieval history. Southern put aside his post in mid-1940 and responded to the war effort by enlisting as a private soldier in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire light infantry. In 1941, he was commissioned in the Durham light infantry where he trained as a tank commander. In 1943, he was transferred to the political intelligence department of the Foreign Office and in 1944 he was promoted to major.

When the war ended in 1945, Southern resumed his position at Balliol, taking on the additional responsibility of serving as the university’s junior proctor. Sadly, his academic career was to be interrupted yet again, as in 1950 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was forced into convalescence for two years. Ever the dedicated historian, while on leave he was able to compose his first book, The Making of the Middle Ages, published in 1953.

In 1961 Southern left his post at Balliol to become the Chichele Professor of Modern History at All Souls College, Oxford. In 1969, he left All Souls to succeed J. D. Mabbott as president of St. John’s College, Oxford. He served in this capacity for twenty years. Having retired from St. John’s, Southern continued to pursue academic research and writing. During this time he published several books and continued to give public lectures, even into his eighties. Some of his later works include St. Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, and Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, which was published in 1995. His last project was planned as a trilogy entitled Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe.

Achievements

• A scholar of the Middle Ages, Southern initially garnered attention with his first work, The Making of the Middle Ages, which was published in 1953.
  
  Southern was a recipient of many honorary degrees from universities in Britain and the United States. He became an honorary fellow of Balliol, Exeter, and St. John’s Colleges in Oxford and of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 1987 he was awarded the Fondazione Internazionale Balzan’s prize for medieval history.
  
  In honour of his tutor Vivian Galbraith, he handed over his prize money to the university, in order to establish a research fellowship in medieval studies at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Making of the Middle Ages

    (A distinguished Oxford historian presents an absorbing st...)

    1953
  • The Penguin History of the Church: Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages

    (The history of the Western church in the Middle Ages is t...)

    2016
  • Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages

    (The concept of an ordered human society, both religious a...)

    1962
  • History and Historians: Selected Papers of R. W. Southern

    (This book makes a selection of writings by the great medi...)

    2004
  • Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe

    (Robert Grosseteste was one of the most independent and vi...)

    1986
  • St. Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape

    (In this magisterial study of the life and work of St. Ans...)

    1963
  • Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe

    (Volume I: Foundations)

    1997
  • The Making of the Middle Ages 1953

Membership

Southern was a member of the American Academy and of Arts and Sciences. In 1960 Southern became a fellow of the British Academy.

Connections

On 31 May 1944 Southern married Sheila Constance Margaret Crichton-Miller. The couple had two sons, Andrew (1945) and Peter (1947).

Father:

Matthew Henry Southern

Mother:

Elizabeth Eleanor Southern

Wife:

Sheila Constance Margaret Crichton-Miller

Son:

Andrew Southern

Born in 1945

Son:

Peter Southern

Born in 1947

mentor:

Frederick Maurice Powicke

16 June 1879 – 19 May 1963

Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke was an English medieval historian. He was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a professor at Belfast and Manchester, and from 1928 until his retirement Regius Professor at Oxford.

mentor:

Vivian Hunter Galbraith

15 December 1889 – 25 November 1976

Vivian Hunter Galbraith was an English historian, fellow of the British Academy and Oxford Regius Professor of Modern History.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields, Vol. 193 In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010