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John Huxtable Elliott

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John Huxtable Elliott, Sir (1930–) Notable as one of the first English historians to work in the field of Spanish history, Elliott also played an important role as a non-Marxist member of the board of Past and Present, as well as being an early advocate of the practice of comparative history. Born 23 June 1930 in Reading, Berkshire, England John Elliot, having received his education at Eton after the close of the Second World War and finishing his military service, received a scholarship in modern languages (French and German) to go to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1949, however before arriving he had already decided he would rather study history for the three years there. In his first year as an undergraduate, having gained an interested in the Spanish past, he went with a group round the Iberian peninsula for six weeks. >"I was very impressed by the country, the Prado Museum, and particularly struck by Velázquez’s portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the famous Spanish statesman of the 17th century at the moment of Spain’s decline, and decided that I’d like to do something connected with his period". His professors Herbert Butterfield, Steven Runciman and Walter Ullmann encouraged him do something on the history of 17th century Spain. This was during the repressive period of the Catalan-Franco regime in the early 1950s and he had serious problems with missing 17th century Olivares documents in the Spanish archives forcing him to change direction and go to Barcelona to work on the 1640 Catalan rebellion against the government in Madrid - with the likes of Jaume Vicens Vives. At about the time he became a Trinity Fellow he earned a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in History in 1955. He also started on Past and Present in the early 1950s, a lively journal tarred with the Marxist brush that meant the Institute for Historical Research refused to take it for many years. until he joined the board of the Institute for Historical