My friend and former colleague Frank O’Gorman, who has died aged 84, spent his entire career in the department of history at the University of Manchester, advancing from an assistant lectureship in 1965 to a personal chair in 1992 before retiring in 2002.
A gifted teacher and a rigorous but popular tutor, he wrote a number of books on 18th- and 19th-century topics, including The Long Eighteenth Century (1997), which examined the transformational change that took place in Britain between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Reform Act of 1832.
Born in Manchester, Frank was the son of Maud (nee Lewtas) and Ernest O’Gorman, a metal dresser with Metropolitan-Vickers. He was educated at St Bede’s college in Manchester, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a history degree before moving to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied for a PhD. His book The Rise of Party in England: The Rockingham Whigs 1760-82, published in 1975, arose from that doctoral research.
Outside his academic work at Manchester, where he and I were colleagues in the history department for many years, Frank loved cruises with his wife, Elsa (nee Buch Kristiensen), a college lecturer, whom he married in 1965. He was also a good tennis player and continued with the game well into middle age. Interested in comedy writing, he took an MA in the subject at Salford University during his retirement.
An extrovert with a generous, warm personality and a sardonic, often self-deprecating sense of humour, Frank enjoyed the company of close friends, with whom he would voice his trenchant views on current affairs.
He is survived by Elsa, their two children, Annelise and Adam, and four grandchildren, Oscar, Mathilda, Kristian and Ellie.
