Donald Pennington; Leading English historian and founder member of CND
Hyfler/Rosner
Leading English historian and founder member of CND
This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday February
21 2008 on p37 of the Obituaries section. It was last
updated at 00:03 on February 21 2008.
Donald Pennington, who has died of kidney cancer aged 88,
was one of the major, unsung but indispensable historians of
17th-century England, which he taught at Manchester and
Oxford universities for nearly 40 years, as well as being a
founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, of
which he remained a committed supporter all his life.
As important as these public achievements were, however, the
lasting memory of all those who encountered Pennington as a
friend, colleague or teacher, was his unaffected warmth,
gentleness and faith in the power of reason. He had a
formidable and subtle intellect as well as a humbling gift
for the right plain word. If he ever raised his voice
publicly - as opposed to speaking out clearly, which he did
all the time - there appears no record of it.
Pennington was a son of Cheshire, born in Marple and
educated in Macclesfield. He spent much of the first half of
his life in that county and in Manchester. Even when he
finally moved south, to Oxford and then, in retirement, to
Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, he remained a recognisably
northern English liberal intellectual. His life was rooted
in hard work of the mind, an avoidance of show, an unbending
belief in social justice and the importance of education, a
hatred of war and a passion for the hills of the north. He
was in every sense a Guardian reader of his era,
knowledgable and committed on many subjects but with no
interest in popular culture.
His father, Frederick, was a teacher. Donald inherited the
belief in the virtue of education and passed it on, not just
to his students but to his children, who both work in higher
education too. He went to King's school, Macclesfield, and
then won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1938,
changing his degree course from philosophy, politics and
economics to history and becoming one of the first Balliol
pupils of the Marxist historian Christopher Hill, who was to
be one of the great influences on him.
Though he came from a mildly Congregationalist background,
the young Pennington soon adopted the principles and beliefs
to which he adhered for the rest of his life. By the time he
reached Oxford, he was on his way to becoming an atheist, a
vegetarian - he could demand an omelette with no ham in
every major European language - and a pacifist. He was
always a supporter of the Labour party, characteristically
able to see the virtues of both Michael Foot, a more natural
soulmate, and Denis Healey, a Balliol contemporary. So
strict were his principles that on one occasion he sacked
his accountant for saving him money that he felt should have
gone to the Inland Revenue.
He completed his degree during the war and then returned to
the north-west to teach, first at Kingsmoor school in
Glossop and then, in 1944, at his old school, King's, in
Macclesfield. When the universities returned to peacetime
operation in 1946, he landed a lectureship in history at
Manchester University, a department then still dominated by
Lewis Namier, the great historian of 18th-century England,
who became the second major influence in Pennington's
intellectual life.
In 1947 he married Marjorie Todd, an English teacher. They
lived in Wythenshawe and Bramhall and had two children.
These were also the years of Pennington's largest published
work, Members of the Long Parliament, co-authored with
Douglas Brunton and published in 1954, which applied the
methods of Namier to the challenges posed by Hill, with an
introduction by RH Tawney.
In the 1950s, Pennington became deeply involved in the peace
movement. He was involved in CND from its outset, a member
of its national executive, and served as its north-west
regional secretary. But he refused to follow Bertrand
Russell down the path of civil disobedience.
In 1965, when Hill became master of Balliol, Pennington
succeeded him as a college tutor. It was probably the
happiest honour of his academic life, and his admiring
pupils included historians as diverse as Geoff Eley, John
Morrill and Patrick Wormald. He watched the student revolts
of the 1960s and 1970s with a mixture of quiet sympathy for
their idealism and marked distaste for their methods. When
Hill retired in 1978, Pennington and Sir Keith Thomas edited
his festschrift.
Pennington retired from Balliol in 1982, moving with
Marjorie to a cottage near Ross. He spent his later years
walking, visiting country churches and in local historical
research.
He is survived by his wife and children, Gail and Piers.
· Donald Henshaw Pennington, historian, born June 15 1919;
died December 28 2007