Norman Davies
Professor Norman Davies is an author and academic and a well known lecturer and broadcaster. Born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1939, he is a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford where he was a pupil of A.J.P Taylor. He was associated with the universities at Grenoble, Perugia, Sussex and Cracow where he obtained his PhD. He made his name in the academic world with several works on Poland and Russia including, White Eagle, Red Star (1972), God’s Playground: A History of Poland (1981) and Heart of Europe (1984). A Professor at the School of Slavonic Studies at the University of London he has been a visiting professor at the McGill (Canada), Columbia (New York), Hokkaido (Japan), Beijing (China), Stanford (California) and Harvard. His book Europe: A History (1994), was considered a ground-breaking work and became an international bestseller and The Isles: A History has made a major contribution to the debate on Britishness. Davies's book Rising '44 describes the Warsaw Uprising and was internationally well received in 2004 on the occasion of the Rising's anniversary. In Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory (2006), Davies persuasively attempts to revise prevailing western perspectives of the Second World War
Davies has been made a Supernumary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and is a Fellow both of the Royal Historical Society and the British Academy. He possesses several honorary doctorates, is an honorary citizen of Cracow and Lublin in Poland and is a Commander of Poland’s Order of Merit and Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George. Norman Davies has many close links and good friends in Australia. He first went as a guest of the Adelaide Festival in 1997 when he presented the Festival Lecture on Europe Overseas and Overland. He returned in 1998-1999 as a visiting scholar at the Australian National University in Canberra and the University of Adelaide. In 2001 he was the guest of the government of New South Wales as a contributor to their Centenary of Federation Programme.
Titles
Vanished Kingdoms (Jonathan Cape, 2008)
East and West: Essays on Europe (Jonathan Cape, 2006)
Europe at War, 1939 -45: No Simple Victory (Macmillan, 2006)
Rising 44’: The Battle for Warsaw (Macmillan, 2003)
Microcosm: A Portrait of a Central European City (Jonathan Cape, 2002, co-written with Roger Moorhouse)
The Isles: A History (Macmillan, 1999)
Red Winds From the North (Able, 1999)
Europe: A History (Oxford University Press, 1996)
Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1991)
Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland (Oxford University Press, 1984)
God’s Playground: A History of Poland (Oxford University Press, 1981)
Poland, Past and Present (Oriental Research Partners, 1977)
White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20 (MacDonald, 1972)