Kedward, H.R.

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KEDWARD, H.R.
(Harry Roderick Kedward)

PERSONAL:

Married; wife's name Carol; children: Joshua, Jessica. Education: Attended Worcester College, Oxford; graduate work at St. Antony's College, Oxford.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brighton, England. Office—Department of History, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SH, England. E-mail—H.R.Kedward@sussex.ac.uk.

CAREER:

University of Sussex, School of European Studies, Sussex, England, professor of history, 1962-2002, chair of the History Subject Group, mid-1990s, professor emeritus, 2002—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Officier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France), 1989; Prix Philippe Viannay—Défense de la France, for In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944.

WRITINGS:

The Dreyfus Affair: Catalyst for Tensions in French Society, Longmans (London, England), 1965.

Fascism in Western Europe, 1900-1945, Blackie (London, England), 1969.

The Anarchists: The Men Who Shocked an Era, American Heritage Press (New York, NY), 1971.

Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern Zone, 1940-1942, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1978.

(Editor, with Roger Austin) Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1985.

Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940-1944, B. Blackwell (New York, NY), 1985.

In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944, Clarendon Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Nancy Wood) The Liberation of France: Image and Event, Berg (Washington, DC), 1995.

La vie en bleu: France and the French since 1900, Allen Lane (London, England), 2005, published as France and the French: A Modern History, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian and educator H.R. Kedward has written numerous books on European history. He has specialized in the World War II era, particularly regarding the Resistance movement in France. His research requires frequent trips to the region once known as the southern part of occupied France, where he has interviewed survivors and investigates archival material pertaining to the period. His In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944, which won the Prix Philippe Viannay—Défense de la France, examines the roots of the Resistance fighter organization and the ways in which it worked within the construct of occupied France. He also rejects the widely held concept that the French Resistance movement involved a minute portion of the population, maintaining that it was an extensive network that even included former revolutionaries from other nations. Richard Vinen remarked in a review for History Today that the book shows "a strange lack of attention to the short-term political antecedents and successors of the Maquis," and noted that "Kedward's enthusiasm to defend the Maquis sometimes causes him to run ahead of the historical debate as he seeks to counter debunking interpretations." However, English Historical Review critic Bob Moore believed that the book "helps to fill a substantial gap in our knowledge of French resistance movements during the German occupation by focusing on the often neglected area of rural resistance."

The Liberation of France: Image and Event compiles a number of papers on the liberation of France, including essays discussing films since the late 1960s that share the theme of liberation. Maurice Larkin, writing for History: The Journal of Historical Association, called the volume "an imaginatively conceived compilation," and concluded: "One of the many virtues of this stimulating collection is that most of the papers attempt to go no further than what the evidence would seem to bear."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

English Historical Review, February, 1996, Bob Moore, review of In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944, p. 274.

Guardian (London, England), August 6, 2005, Adam Thorpe, review of La vie en bleu: France and the French since 1900.

Historian, summer, 1995, William A. Hoisington, Jr., review of In Search of the Maquis, p. 602.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, July, 1997, Maurice Larkin, review of The Liberation of France, p. 539.

History Today, March, 1994, Richard Vinen, review of In Search of the Maquis, p. 59; November, 1997, Martyn Cornick, review of The Liberation of France, p. 57.

Journal of European Studies, March, 1996, David Platten, review of The Liberation of France, p. 87.

San Diego Tribune, January 22, 2006, Kathryn Statler, review of France and the French: A Modern History.