John Gurney (1960-2014)

John Gurney, who died tragically young in December 2014, was an outstanding socialist historian of the revolutionary years of England's seventeenth century. He was born in Vienna the son of Joyce (née Wilkins) and Dick Gurney, who was working for the International Atomic Energy Agency. He spent his childhood there and in Geneva before coming back to school in London. He went to Sussex as an undergraduate in the late 1970s and followed this with an MA and a Doctorate under the supervision of Willie Lamont. He was an MA student when I first encountered him, mainly though my partner, Linda Merricks, who was also doing an MA in Early Modern History. But it was on Thursdays that I got to know John well. For all my time at Sussex the Thursday evening ‘Work in Progress’ seminar was a gathering point for faculty and postgraduates. Afterwards it spilled into the Gardner Arts Centre bar and after that, for the hardier and usually younger members, it continued in Brighton, first in the ‘London Unity’ and in later years in the ‘Sir Charles Napier’. Here, as the evening went on, history moved into politics and (mostly) good-natured argument between the different factions of the Left.

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