John Watts (historian)

John Watts is a prominent English historian, specialising in the political history of Late Medieval England. He studied for his PhD under Christine Carpenter, researching politics and the English constitution during the reign of Henry VI of England, which was awarded in early 1991. He had joined Merton College, Oxford the previous year as a junior research Fellow, and from there became a Lecturer at the University of Aberystwyth. He returned to Oxford in 1997, joining Corpus Christi College as a fellow and tutor in medieval history. He has described the context of his interests- Henry VI- as "a famously useless king, who came to the throne as a baby and ruled with astonishing inertness for a further thirty-nine years". He is now professor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.