The Right Honourable The Lord Thomas of Swynnerton
Member of theHouse of Lords Lord Temporal
In office 16 June 1981 – 7 May 2017 Life peerage
Personal details
Born	(1931-10-21)21 October 1931 Windsor, Berkshire, England
Died	7 May 2017(2017-05-07) (aged 85)
Political party	Crossbench (1999–2017)
Other political affiliations	Labour (until 1974) Conservative (1979–1997) Liberal Democrats (1997–1999)
Spouse	Hon. Vanessa Jebb
Children	3

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton (21 October 1931 – 7 May 2017),^[1][2] was an English historian and writer known best for his bookThe Spanish Civil War.^[3]

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas was born on 21 October 1931 inWindsor, Berkshire, England, to Hugh Whitelegge Thomas (1887–1960), a colonial commissioner and Cambridge cricketer, and his wife, Margery Augusta Angelo (née Swynnerton).^[4] SirShenton Thomas was his uncle.^[5] He was educated atSherborne School inDorset, before going up toQueens' College, Cambridge,^[1] where he was a major scholar and later an Honorary Fellow. Thomas gained afirst class in Part I of the HistoryTripos in 1952, and the following year was president of theCambridge Union Society. He also studied at theSorbonne in Paris.^[6]

From 1954 to 1957 Thomas worked in theForeign Office partly as secretary of the British Delegation to the sub-committee of theUN Disarmament Commission. From 1966 to 1975, he was Professor of History at theUniversity of Reading, and chairman of the European committee. He was then chairman of the neoliberalCentre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991.

Until 1974 Thomas was a member of theLabour Party.^[7] He was created alife peer asBaron Thomas of Swynnerton,ofNotting Hill inGreater London byletters patent dated 16 June 1981, and sat as aConservative, before he joined theLiberal Democrats in late 1997.^[8] He later sat as acrossbencher.

He wrote political works favouringEuropean integration, such asEurope: the Radical Challenge (1973), as well as histories. He was also the author of three novels:The World's Game (1957),The Oxygen Age (1958), andKlara (1988). Thomas's 1961 bookThe Spanish Civil War won theSomerset Maugham Award for 1962. A significantly revised and enlarged third edition was published in 1977; further editions were published in 1999 and 2012.Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971) is a book of over 1,500 pages tracing thehistory of Cuba fromSpanish colonial rule until theCuban Revolution. In 1985 he signed a petition against theSandinista National Liberation Front ofNicaragua,^[9] in support of theContras, an anti-Sandinista paramilitary group.

In 1990 he was one of the leading historians behind the setting up of the History Curriculum Association. The Association advocated a more knowledge-based history curriculum in schools. It expressed "profound disquiet" at the way history was being taught in the classroom and observed that the integrity of history was threatened.^[10]

Thomas was married to Vanessa Jebb, a painter and a daughter ofGladwyn Jebb, the first ActingUnited NationsSecretary-General andBritish Ambassador to France. They had three children: Inigo, Isambard and Isabella.^[1]

Thomas won theSomerset Maugham Award (1962), the Nonino Prize (2009), theBoccaccio Prize (2009), the Gabarrón Prize (2008) and the Calvo Serer Prize (2009). TheFrench Government appointed himCommander of theOrder of Arts and Letters in 2008.

Thomas also received theGrand Cross of theRoyal Order of Isabella the Catholic^[11] from Spain, as well as theMexicanOrder of the Aztec Eagle, the Joaquín Romero Murube Prize inSeville (2013) and the Grand Cross of theCivil Order of Alfonso X the Wise (2014).^[12]

• Disarmament – The Way AheadFabian Society (1957).
• The Spanish Civil War (1961);Penguin Books Ltd (1968); 2nd revised edition (1977); 4th revised edition (2003). A new revised edition in 2011^[13] commemorated the book's reaching 50 consecutive years in print; it was published in 15 languages.
• Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971); revised editions (1998), (2002), (2010).
• Europe: The Radical Challenge (1973).
• John Strachey (1973).
• An Unfinished History of the World (1979); published in the United States asA History of the World, then asWorld History (1998); and under the original title in London (byHamish Hamilton) in 1979, and with revised editions in 1981 and 1982.
• The Revolution On Balance (1983), Washington, DC;Cuban American National Foundation 1983 (CANF pamphlet #5).online
• Armed Truce (1986). A history of the beginning of theCold War.online
• Ever Closer Union (1991).
• The Conquest of Mexico (1993); published in the United States asConquest:Montezuma,Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico.
• TheSlave Trade: The History of theAtlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (1997);Simon & Schuster.
• Who Is Who of theConquistadors (2000). A study of those who fought for Cortés.
• Rivers of Gold (2003); the first book in a trilogy about theSpanish Empire.
• Beaumarchais inSeville (2006);ISBN 978-0-300-12103-2.
• Eduardo Barreiros and the Recovery of Spain (2009); a biography of Eduardo Barreiros.
• The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire ofCharles V (2010); the second book in a trilogy about the Spanish Empire. Published in the United States asThe Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America (2011).
• The World's Game; a novel (1957).
• The Oxygen Age; a novel (1958).
• Klara, a novel (1988).
• TheSuez Affair (1966); an analysis of theSuez Crisis of 1956.
• World Without End: The Global Empire ofPhilip II (2014); the third volume in a trilogy about the Spanish Empire.

• Restall, Matthew. "World Without End: Spain, Philip II, and the First Global Empire.'Journal of World History (2016) 27#3 pp. 571–576. Reviews the book and his career.

•  SpanishWikiquote has quotations related to:Hugh Thomas

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