James Ross Wordie was educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, and Queens’ College Cambridge, where he took a degree in History in 1963. He then spent a further year at Cambridge, taking a PGCE at Cambridge University’s Department of Education, intending to teach at a school or college. However, he was persuaded to begin PhD research at the University of Reading, specialising in Agricultural History. This PhD was completed in 1967, and he next began to lecture at St. David’s College in Lampeter, which was then the oldest constituent college of the federal University of Wales. In 1970 he returned to the University of Reading where he lectured on British Social and Economic History until his retirement from lecturing in 2004.
What kind of forces have shaped our modern world? Have they been political, economic, scientific, or perhaps even theological? The answer is that all of these forces have been at work, but they have all been the product of ideas, as our views on all of these topics have changed over time. Can ideas ...