Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Merson, Allan

26.08.1916 – 28.10.1995

Born in Northumberland, Alan Merson’s initial intention was to become a Presbyterian minister. However, at Oxford in the 1930s he began a lifelong friendship with the celebrated Marxist historian, Christopher Hill, and this together with the Spanish Civil War led to him joining the Communist Party of Great Britain to which he belonged as an active member for the rest of his life.

Following service during the Second World War, mainly in the Intelligence Corps, he was appointed a lecturer in the History Department of University College, Southampton in 1945/6, as a specialist in economic history. Promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1964/5 he became a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1973/4. He retired in the late 1970s due to ill-health.

In an obituary published in The Guardian he was described as a ‘gentle Stalinist’ undeterred by the changes in Eastern Europe at the end of his life. Notwithstanding his political beliefs and intellect, he was ‘totally without pretension … [providing] a model for a new and better life: egalitarian, respectful of the young … mocking of hypocrisy, pomp and authority (The Guardian, 01.12.1995).

Sources

The Papers of the Historian Allan Merson

Goodway, David, ‘The Material of History’, The Guardian, 01.12.1995.

Portrait

Contribution to county’s history

Although Allan was an acknowledged expert on the Third Reich and the English Civil War, to which most of his published outputs relate, he did make an important contribution to the recording of Southampton’s history. Between 1952 and 1965 he edited three volumes of the Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton.

Relevant published works

• Merson, A ed. (1952), The Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton 1514-1602 Vol 1 1514-1540, Southampton University Press

• Merson, A ed, (1955), The Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton 1514-1602 Vol 2 1540-1573, Southampton University Press

• Merson, A ed. (1965), The Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton 1514-1602 Vol 3 1573-1589 Southampton University Press

Critical Comments

Other Comments

Just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, Merson spent a considerable amount of time travelling in Germany and France and became fluent in both German and French. Arguably, his major work of scholarship is Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany published in 1985. He also wrote a number of ‘Our History’ pamphlets, one of which was Town Privileges and Politics in Tudor and Stuart England (1958).

Contributor

Roger Ottewill (13.12.2021)

Key Words

Southampton, University College Southampton, The Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton

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