John Gillingham

John Gillingham (born 1940) is a British medieval historian and author whose scholarship focuses particularly on England and north-western Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. He taught at the London School of Economics from 1965 until 1998 and is now Professor Emeritus there; he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007. His research has examined medieval kingship, warfare, political culture, national identity and the values expressed in contemporary chronicles and narrative sources. Gillingham is especially associated with reassessments of the Angevin kings and has played an important role in challenging older portrayals of medieval rulers as either straightforward heroes or failures.

His best-known work is Richard I, a major biography of Richard the Lionheart in which Gillingham argues against the traditional picture of a reckless crusader who neglected England, presenting him instead as an effective and highly capable medieval ruler. He has also written William II: The Red King, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values and Conquests, Catastrophe and Recovery: Britain and Ireland 1066–1485, as well as numerous studies of warfare and political society. Across these works, Gillingham places individual rulers within the wider structures of medieval government, aristocratic culture, conquest and identity, making his scholarship particularly important for understanding Norman and Plantagenet England and the political world surrounding the Crusades.