Jonathan Bate writes: Asa Briggs had a powerful sense of place. He was proud to hail from the heart of Brontë country. The pioneering quality of his books on the Victorian era came from their attunement to regions and communities, to particular cities and social groups, as well as from his ease in moving between literary sources and more conventional historical ones.
His academic career took him far and wide, but it was at Worcester College, Oxford, as fellow and later provost, that he felt the strongest sense of place. Initially he taught the whole of PPE there. He had simultaneously taken degrees in history and economics, so could cope with the politics and economics, but had to mug up the philosophy over the vacation. He was held in great esteem by his students, including Rupert Murdoch, to whom he had to break the news of his father’s sudden death in Australia.
Martin Stott writes: One of the “eminent Victorians” celebrated by Asa Briggs was William Morris, in a Penguin collection of selected writings and designs (1962). Briggs was an early member and eventual president (1978-91) of the William Morris Society. In 1959 the Soviet authorities banned GDH Cole’s centenary edition of Morris’s works from a British Council exhibition in Moscow, allegedly for its political commentary. The issue was reported in the Guardian and raised in the House of Commons. After some pressure from Briggs and an apologetic explanation in the Daily Worker, the book was restored to the exhibition on the day before it closed.
