Asa Briggs
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The Right Honourable The Lord Briggs |
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Asa Briggs
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| Born |
7 May 1921 Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 15 March 2016 (aged 94) Lewes, East Sussex, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Spouse(s) | Susan Anne Banwell (1955–2016, his death) |
Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs (7 May 1921 – 15 March 2016) was an English historian. He was a leading specialist on the Victorian era, and the foremost historian of broadcasting in Britain. He was made a life peer in 1976.
Asa Briggs was born in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1921 to William Briggs, an engineer, and his wife Jane. He was educated at Keighley Boys' Grammar School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA (first class) in 1941, and a BSc in Economics (first class) from the University of London External Programme, also in 1941.
From 1942 to 1945 during the Second World War, Briggs served in the Intelligence Corps and worked at the British wartime codebreaking station, Bletchley Park. He was a member of "the Watch" in Hut 6, the section deciphering Enigma machine messages from the German Army and Luftwaffe. This posting had arisen because at college Briggs had played chess with Cambridge mathematician Howard Smith (who was to become the Director General of MI5 in 1979) and Smith had written to the head of Hut 6, Gordon Welchman, who was also a Cambridge mathematician, recommending Briggs to him.
After the war, he was elected a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford (1945–55), and was subsequently appointed University Reader in Recent Social and Economic History (1950–55). Whilst a young Fellow, Briggs proofread Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. He was later Faculty Fellow of Nuffield College (1953–55) and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, United States (1953–54).
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