Episode 21. R. H. Tawney

SYNOPSIS

The author of The Acquisitive Society (1920) and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), the economic historian, R. H. Tawney was educated in a tradition of public service.  He attended Rugby School, befriending the future Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and Balliol College, where the moral and religious influence of the idealist philosopher T. H. Green held sway. Later he volunteered at the university settlement Toynbee Hall, marrying the sister of fellow resident William Beveridge, the architect of the Welfare State.  A lifelong Anglican, Tawney remained reticent about the devout Christianity which drove his egalitarianism, except in his private Commonplace Book. But it found outward manifestation in the Workers Educational Association for which he was a full-time tutor. Badly wounded at the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, Tawney recovered to become a Professor at the London School of Economics and a life-long advocate of universal education.   

GUEST

Lawrence Goldman is Emeritus Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford University and the former Director of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London. The author of the standard biography of Tawney (2013), he became interested in his subject through being appointed to ‘Tawney’s job’, teaching adult students as the History and Politics lecturer at the Department for Continuing Education in the University of Oxford.  

Lawrence’s interview with Simon Machin was recorded online on 7 September 2022.