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Ronald Hutton

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Template:Short description Template:Use Indian English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox academic

Ronald Edmund Hutton Template:Postnom (born 19 December 1953) is an Indian-born English historian specialising in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol, Hutton has written over a dozen books, often appearing on British television and radio. He held a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and is a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Born in Ootacamund, India, he returned to England with his family, where he attended a school in Ilford and became particularly interested in archaeology. He volunteered in a number of excavations until 1976 and visited the country's chambered tombs. He studied history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and then Magdalen College, Oxford, before he lectured in history at the University of Bristol from 1981. Specialising in Early Modern Britain, he wrote three books on the subject: The Royalist War Effort (1981), The Restoration (1985), and Charles the Second (1990).

He followed these with books about historical paganism, folklore, and modern paganism in Britain: The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (1991), The Rise and Fall of Merry England (1994), The Stations of the Sun (1996), and The Triumph of the Moon (1999), the last of which would come to be praised as a seminal text in Pagan studies. Subsequent work include Shamans (2001), covering Siberian shamanism in the western imagination; Witches, Druids and King Arthur (2003), a collection of essays on folklore and Paganism; then two books on the role of the Druids in the British imagination: The Druids (2007) and Blood and Mistletoe (2009).

Elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2011,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> then a Fellow of the British Academy in 2013,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Hutton was appointed Gresham Professor of Divinity in 2022.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

BiographyEdit

Early life: 1953–1980Edit

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Hutton was born on 19 December 1953 in Ootacamund, India, to a colonial family,Template:Sfn<ref name="ReferenceA">Hutton 1991. p. dust jacket.</ref> and is of part-Russian ancestry.<ref name="histod">Hutton, Ronald (Dec 1998). "Roots and rituals". History Today 48 (12): 62–63. {{#if:0018-2753|Template:Catalog lookup link{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}{{#if:Template:Trim|{{#ifeq:Template:Yesno-no|yes|Template:Main other|{{#invoke:check isxn|check_issn|Template:Trim|error=Template:Error-smallTemplate:Main other}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}|Template:Error-small}}.</ref> Upon arriving in England, he attended Ilford County High School, whilst becoming greatly interested in archaeology, joining the committee of a local archaeological group and taking part in excavations from 1965 to 1976, including at such sites as Pilsdon Pen hill fort, Ascott-under-Wychwood long barrow, Hen Domen castle and a temple on Malta. Meanwhile, during the period between 1966 and 1969, he visited "every prehistoric chambered tomb surviving in England and Wales, and wrote a guide to them, for myself [Hutton] and friends."<ref name="blam">Hutton 2009. pp. xii–xiii.</ref>

Despite his love of archaeology, he instead decided to study history at university, believing that he had "probably more aptitude" for it. He won a scholarship to study at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he continued his interest in archaeology alongside history, in 1975 taking a course run by the university's archaeologist Glyn Daniel, an expert on the Neolithic.<ref name="blam"/> From Cambridge, he went on to study at Oxford University, where he gained a doctorate, supervised by Hugh Trevor-Roper,<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref> and took up a fellowship at Magdalen College.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Bristol University and first publications: 1981–1990Edit

In 1981, Hutton moved to the University of Bristol where he took up the position of reader of History. In that year he also published his first book, The Royalist War Effort 1642–1646, and followed it with three more books on 17th century British history by 1990.

The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: 1991–1993Edit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Hutton followed his studies on the Early Modern period with a book on a very different subject, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (1991), in which he attempted to "set out what is at present known about the religious beliefs and practices of the British Isles before their conversion to Christianity. The term 'pagan' is used as a convenient shorthand for those beliefs and practices, and is employed in the title merely to absolve the book from any need to discuss early Christianity itself."<ref>Hutton 1991. p. vii.</ref> It thereby examined religion during the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman occupation and Anglo-Saxon period, as well as a brief examination of their influence on folklore and contemporary Paganism. In keeping with what was by then the prevailing academic view, it disputed the widely held idea that ancient paganism had survived into the contemporary and had been revived by the Pagan movement.

The book proved controversial amongst some contemporary Pagans and feminists involved in the Goddess movement, one of whom, Asphodel Long, issued a public criticism of Hutton in which she charged him with failing to take non-mainstream ideas about ancient goddess cults into consideration.<ref>Long 1992.</ref> Ultimately, Hutton would later relate, she "recognised that she had misunderstood me" and the two became friends.<ref>Hutton 2010. p. 257.</ref> Another feminist critic, Max Dashu, condemned the work as containing "factual errors, mischaracterizations, and outright whoppers" and said she was "staggered by the intense anti-feminism of this book". She went on to attack Hutton's writing style, calling the book "dry as dust" and said she was "sorry I bothered to plough through it. If this is rigor, it is mortis."<ref>Dashu 1998.</ref>

Meanwhile, whilst he faced criticism from some sectors of the Pagan community in Britain, others came to embrace him; during the late 1980s and 1990s, Hutton befriended a number of practising British Pagans, including "leading Druids" such as Tim Sebastion, who was then Chief of the Secular Order of Druids. On the basis of The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (which he himself had not actually read), Sebastion invited Hutton to speak at a conference in Avebury where he befriended a number of members of the Pagan Druidic movement, including Philip Carr-Gomm, Emma Restall Orr and John Michell.<ref>Hutton 2009. p. xiv.</ref>

Studies of British folklore: 1994–1996Edit

In the following years, Hutton released two books on British folklore, both of which were published by Oxford University Press: The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (1994) and The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (1996). In these works he criticised commonly held attitudes, such as the idea of Merry England and the idea that folk customs were static and unchanging over the centuries.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Once again, he was following prevailing expert opinion in doing so.

The Triumph of the Moon: 1997–1999Edit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} In 1999, his first work fully focusing on Paganism was published by Oxford University Press; The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. The book dealt with the history of the Pagan religion of Wicca, and in the preface Hutton stated that:

the subtitle of this book should really be 'a history of modern pagan witchcraft in South Britain (England, Wales, Cornwall and Man), with some reference to it in the rest of the British Isles, Continental Europe and North America'. The fact that it claims to be a history and not the history is in itself significant, for this book represents the first systematic attempt by a professional historian to characterise and account for this aspect of modern Western culture."<ref>Hutton 1999. p. vii.</ref>

Hutton questioned many assumptions about Wicca's development, argued that many of the claimed connections to longstanding hidden pagan traditions are questionable at best and also for its importance as a genuine new religious movement.

Response from the Neopagan communityEdit

The response from the Neopagan community was somewhat mixed. Many Pagans embraced his work, with the prominent Wiccan Elder Frederic Lamond referring to it as "an authority on the history of Gardnerian Wicca".<ref>Lamond 2004. p. 64-65.</ref> Public criticism came from the practising Wiccan Jani Farrell-Roberts, who took part in a published debate with Hutton in The Cauldron magazine in 2003. Farrell-Roberts was of the opinion that in his works, Hutton dismissed Margaret Murray's theories about the Witch-Cult using Norman Cohn's theories, which she believed to be heavily flawed. She stated that "he is... wrongly cited as an objective neutral and a 'non-pagan' for he happens to be a very active member of the British Pagan community" who "had taken on a mission to reform modern paganism by removing from it a false history and sense of continuance".<ref>Farrell-Roberts, Jani. (May 2003). The Cauldron</ref>

Shamans and Witches, Druids and King Arthur: 2000–2006Edit

Hutton next turned his attention to Siberian shamanism, with Hambledon and London publishing Shamans: Siberian Spirituality in the Western Imagination in 2001, in which he argued that much of what westerners think they know about shamanism is in fact wrong.

In his review for the academic Folklore journal, Jonathan Roper of the University of Sheffield noted that the work "could profitably have been twice as long and have provided a more extended treatment of the issues involved" and that it suffered from a lack of images. On the whole he thought it should be "recommended to readers as an important work" on the subject of shamanism, and hoped that Hutton would "return to treat this fascinating topic in even greater depth in future".<ref name=roper>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 2003, Hambledon & London also published Witches, Druids and King Arthur, a collection of various articles by Hutton, including on topics such as the nature of myth and the pagan themes found within the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

The Druids and Blood and Mistletoe: 2007–2009Edit

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After studying the history of Wicca, Hutton went on to look at the history of Druidry, both the historical and the contemporary. His first book on the subject, The Druids, was published in 2007. Part of this material was given as the first lecture of the Mount Haemus Award series.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Hutton's next book, which was also about Druidry, was entitled Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain, and released in May 2009.

In a review by David V. Barrett in The Independent, Blood and Mistletoe was described as being more "academic and more than three times the length" of The Druids, although Barrett argued that despite this it was still "very readable", even going so far as to call it a "tour de force".<ref>Barrett 2009.</ref> The review by Noel Malcolm in The Daily Telegraph was a little more critical, claiming that whilst Hutton was "non-sensationalist and scrupulously polite" about the various Druidic eccentrics, "occasionally, even-handedness tips over towards relativism – as if there are just different ways of looking at reality, each as good as the other. And that cannot be right."<ref>Malcolm 2009.</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

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Hutton was married to Lisa Radulovic from August 1988 to March 2003, when they divorced.Template:Sfn Although he has written much on the subject of Paganism, Hutton insists that his own religious beliefs are a private matter. He has instead stated that "to some extent history occupies the space in my life filled in that of others by religion or spirituality. It defines much of the way I come to terms with the cosmos, and with past, present and future."<ref name="blam"/> He was raised Pagan, and was personally acquainted with Wiccans from youth.<ref>Ronald Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur, p. 269.</ref> He has become a "well-known and much loved figure" in the British Pagan community.<ref>Whitlock 2011. p. 33.</ref>

Interviewing Hutton for The Independent, the journalist Gary Lachman commented that he had "a very pragmatic, creative attitude, recognising that factual error can still produce beneficial results", for instance noting that even though their theories about the Early Modern witch-cult were erroneous, Margaret Murray and Gerald Gardner would help lay the foundations for the creation of the new religious movement of Wicca.<ref name="Lachman 2007"/>

Hutton was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to history.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

WorksEdit

Hutton's books can be divided into those about seventeenth-century Britain and those about paganism and folk customs in Britain.

Seventeenth century BritainEdit

In his What If the Gunpowder Plot Had Succeeded?, Hutton has considered what might have happened if the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 had succeeded in its aims of the death of King James I and the destruction of the House of Lords. He concluded that the violence of the act would have resulted in an even more severe backlash against suspected Catholics than was caused by its failure, as most Englishmen were loyal to the monarchy, despite differing religious convictions. England could very well have become a more "Puritan absolute monarchy", rather than following the path of parliamentary and civil reform.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

BibliographyEdit

BooksEdit

Title Year Publisher ISBN
The Royalist War Effort 1642–1646 1982 Routledge (London)
The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658–1667 1985 Clarendon 0-19-822698-5
Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland and Ireland 1989 Clarendon 0-19-822911-9
The British Republic 1649–1660 1990 Palgrave Macmillan
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy 1991 Blackwell (Oxford and Cambridge) 0-631-18946-7
The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 1994 Oxford University Press (Oxford and New York) 9 780198-203636
The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain 1996 Oxford University Press (Oxford and New York)
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft 1999 Oxford University Press (Oxford and New York) 9 780198 207443
Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination 2001 Hambledon and London (London and New York) 1-85295-324-7
Witches, Druids and King Arthur 2003 Hambledon
Debates in Stuart History 2004 Palgrave Macmillan
The Druids: A History 2007 Hambledon Continuum
Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain 2009 Yale University Press (London) 978-0-300-14485-7
A Brief History of Britain 1485–1660: The Tudor and Stuart Dynasties 2011 Robinson 978-1845297046
Pagan Britain 2013 Oxford University Press 978-0300197716
The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present 2017 Yale University Press 978-0300229042
The Making of Oliver Cromwell 2021 Yale University Press 978-0300257458
Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation 2022 Yale University Press 978-0300261011
Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief 2024 Yale University Press 978-0300278941

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Journal articlesEdit

  • "Romano-British Reuse of Prehistoric Ritual Sites" in Britannia Vol. 42 (2011), pp. 1–22.

TapesEdit

  • England's Haunted Hills the Cotswolds

1991 Educational Excursions 1-878877-06-2

DocumentariesEdit

  • Britain's Wicca Man, documentary on Wicca and Gerald Gardener, 2012.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • A Very British Witchcraft, documentary, 2013.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Professor Hutton's Curiosities, documentary series, 2013.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

AppearancesEdit

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Reviews and assessmentEdit

Academic reviewsEdit

Other reviewsEdit

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ReferencesEdit

FootnotesEdit

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SourcesEdit

Academic books

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Non-academic sources

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External linksEdit

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