Keith Thomas (historian)

Sir Keith Vivian Thomas, FBA, FRHistS (born 2 January 1933) is a Welsh historian of the early modern world based at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of Religion and the Decline of Magic and Man and the Natural World. From 1986 and 2000, he was President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Quotes about Keith Thomas

• A second name I want to mention is that of Keith Thomas. I still recall reading his essay on the social origins of Hobbes’s political theory, which was published shortly after I began research on Hobbes’s philosophy myself. I was amazed by its sheer learning, and exhilarated by its success in situating Hobbes’s thinking within its ideological context.
  • Quentin Skinner, interview at the interviewee’s home, London, 18 April 2008