Editing Clive Ponting (section)

==Academic career==
Following his resignation from the Civil Service, Ponting served as a [[Reader (academic rank)|reader]] in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the [[University of Wales, Swansea]], until his retirement in 2004. He was one of the pioneers of [[Big History]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Brown|first1=Cynthia Stokes|title=Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present|date=2012|publisher=The New Press|isbn=978-1595588456|page=xiii|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-zLiq2H8obMC&q=%22big+history%22+%22clive+ponting%22&pg=PR13}}</ref>

His historical works have attracted attention from other academics, with scholar Paul Addison writing that "Ponting writes well and the clarity with which he summarises the issues calls to mind a model civil servant briefing his minister. He swoops like a hawk on the damning quotation or the telling statistic."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-bureaucrat-bites-bulldog-churchill-clive-ponting-sinclair-stevenson-20-pounds-1434569.html|title=BOOK REVIEW / Bureaucrat bites bulldog: 'Churchill' - Clive Ponting|date=8 May 1994|website=The Independent}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/09/book-reviews-churchill|title=Review: Three books about Churchill|first=Richard|last=Gott|newspaper=The Observer |date=9 November 2008|via=www.theguardian.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n12/paul-addison/garbo-co|title=Paul Addison · Garbo & Co · LRB 28 June 1990|first=Paul|last=Addison|date=28 June 1990|journal=London Review of Books|volume=12|issue=12}}</ref> [[C. J. Coventry]] reviewed Ponting's biography of [[Winston Churchill|Churchill]], writing that "Ponting shattered the Churchill illusion for his readers leaving them little to piece together, just marble shards on the floor of his looted temple".<ref>{{cite journal|title=CJ Coventry, Clive Ponting's Churchill, ''Before/Now'', 1(1) (2019)|url=https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:23811/|doi=10.17613/4dj5-f938|last=Coventry|first=Cameron|journal=Before/Now|year=2019|volume=1|issue=1|pages=78–79}}</ref>