Arthur Bryant Quotes

Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant was an English historian, columnist for the Illustrated London News and man of affairs. His books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V. Whilst his scholarly reputation has declined somewhat since his death, he continues to be read and to be the subject of detailed historical studies. He moved in high government circles and his books were devoured by the ruling elite; he was the favourite historian of at least three prime ministers: Churchill, Attlee, and Wilson. Bryant's historiography was often based on an English romantic exceptionalism drawn from his nostalgia for an idealised agrarian past. He hated modern commercial and financial capitalism, he emphasised duty over rights, and he equated democracy with the consent of "fools" and "knaves". Though he expected to join the British Army, he won in 1916 a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1919 he studied modern history at Queen's College, Oxford.