Hugh Francis Kearney

Professor of history and author

Born: January 22, 1924;

Died: October 1, 2017

PROFESSOR Hugh Kearney, who has died aged 93, was a historian with a famously light touch who challenged students and readers of his superbly researched books to view the pasts of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales as inseparable. Professor Kearney, who taught at Edinburgh University for five years, argued that key events, from the Roman conquest to the Industrial Revolution and beyond, affected the region as a whole.

Through his book The British Isles: A History of Four Nations, Professor Kearney sought to alter the way the islands’ occupants viewed their past. Before its publication, in 1989, the writing of the histories of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales had tended to be separate, narrowly national projects, with that of England given primacy. Professor Kearney adopted a quite different perspective.

His challenge to the prevailing Anglo centricity was better appreciated by the time of the book’s second edition (2006). The pan-Britannic perspective he took of the whole archipelago, from prehistory to the present day, became ever more relevant for contemplating the current state of relations between Scotland and the three other nations of the United Kingdom, and between them and the European Union.

Professor Kearney’s final book, Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History (2007), contains reprints of many of his challenging articles on Irish history, revolving around Anglo-Irish relations and based on voracious reading transcending disciplinary and national boundaries, not least on the role of nationalism in eastern Europe.

In this book, he poses questions of enduring relevance, particularly in the current Brexit debate such as Who is included in the Irish nation?, How does its soft northern border relate to religion, ethnicity, languages and civic commitment?, and How should its history be taught?”

Born in Liverpool, Professor Kearney was named after his father, a first world war ambulance driver who went on to work for the Co-op. Martha (nee Thomas), his mother, ran a number of market stalls. He attended St Francis Xavier college, from where he won a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, starting on his history studies in 1942 and graduated from there after army service.

After working for Manchester University Press, in 1950, he became a lecturer at University College Dublin. It was in Dublin that he met his wife, Catherine (Kate) Murphy, a student from Tyrone, Northern Ireland. They married in 1956, and had three children, Martha, Jamie and Peter.

At UCD, he embarked on research, which led to the publication of his thesis, Strafford in Ireland 1633-41: A Study in Absolutism (1959), which has done much to transform views of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who was appointed lord deputy of Ireland by Charles I, but ultimately impeached and executed for his tyrannical conduct.

A series of positive reviews led to Kearney’s appointment in 1962 as a lecturer at the new University of Sussex. In teaching, as in writing, he stuck to the view that “conflicting interpretations are a commonplace of historical writing, but once their existence is recognised, the historian is no longer free to adopt the simplicity of one point of view alone”. He went to Edinburgh University in 1970.

Hugh Kearney’s daughter Martha, the television and radio journalist and presenter, said the Dublin years were some of the happiest in her father’s life. Former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald once told her that no party was complete without someone falling down the steps outside his house. In Sussex in the early sixties, he taught a course in Yeats and Joyce, which he told her was one of the most intellectually stimulating times he had had as an academic.

She added: “After we moved to Edinburgh, where he became the Richard Pares Professor of History, my father began to develop his interest in the many different cultural identities which developed over time in the islands of Britain and Ireland. Under the influence of Professor Kenneth Jackson, he began to engage with Gaelic culture in Scotland. Always interested in etymology, he often used to quote Macbeth “kerns and galloglasses” which has the same roots as the surname Kearney.

"Scotland provided the opportunity to visit many historical sites. He originally met my mother through their shared interest in archaeology. There were many family outings to Linlithgow Castle, one of his favourites.

"It was in Edinburgh that he began a lifelong love of sailing at Aberdour in Fife. The family lived in Regent Terrace, which he bought for £12,000 in 1971, a house untouched for 60 years with original gaslight fittings and wooden telephones. He loved the view of Arthur’s Seat from the windows.”

Ms Kearney said teaching was as important to her father as writing and research and that in his 20 years as Amundson Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, he enjoyed being able to focus on classes rather than administration.

Martha Kearney, who is a former pupil of George Watson’s Ladies College, added: “While my brothers and I are very proud of Dad’s academic achievements, it’s our funny, kind father we shall miss: the man who enjoyed embarrassing his children by imitating John Cleese’s silly walks in the street, who was equally at home watching Liverpool FC as at high table at a Cambridge college.”

Following his retirement in 1999, Professor Kearney and his wife moved to Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk. She and his children, Martha, 60, Jamie, 58, who teaches world history in Maryland, USA, and Peter, 57, who worked at Sainsbury’s, the supermarket chain, survive him.

BILL HEANEY