R. H. Tawney

Richard Henry Tawney (30 November 1880 to 16 January 1962) was an English economic historian, social critic, ethical and Christian socialist, and an important proponent of adult education. Born in Calcutta, then in British India, he was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating in 1903 he lived at Toynbee Hall, then the home of the recently formed Workers' Educational Association, an experience that had a profound effect on him. From January 1908 he taught the first Workers' Educational Association tutorial classes, at Longton in Stoke-on-Trent and at Rochdale in Lancashire. The Oxford Companion to British History described his impact across these interrelated roles as significant, and the historian A. L. Rowse went further, insisting that Tawney exercised the widest influence of any historian of his time, politically, socially and above all educationally.