Dr Peter Webster

Peter Webster is Editorial Controller of British History Online, and Manager of SAS-Space, the digital repository for the School of Advanced Study.

Before joining the IHR, Peter completed his Ph.D. at the University of Sheffield, and was Technical Assistant to the AHRB Russian Visual Arts Project in the Sheffield Humanities Research Institute. He also taught in the University's Department of History.

Research Interests

My historical interests include: the relationship between the arts and Christian theology in England, particulary in the 16th, 17th and 20th centuries; the patronage of George Bell (bishop of Chichester), and Walter Hussey (vicar of St Matthew's, Northampton and later dean of Chichester.); the career of Michael Ramsey, archbishop of Canterbury, and the relationship of church, state and culture in 20th century Britain.

I am also interested in: the way in which historians use the web as both a tool and as a source in itself; digitisation in the Anglophone academic world; open access publishing in the humanities, and institutional repositories in particular.

 

Current projects

  • British History Online
  • Participant in the 'Curating the Web as Research’ project at the British Library; sub-section on 'The politics of religion in Britain after 9/11'
  • SAS-Space, the digital repository for the School of Advanced Study

Networks and collaborations

 

Publications

Articles

'Archbishop Temple's offer of a Lambeth degree to Dorothy L. Sayers' (edition and introduction) in Barber, Taylor and Sewell (eds), From the Reformation to the Permissive Society (Church of England Record Society, 2010) pp.565-82.

‘George Bell, John Masefield and 'The Coming of Christ': context and significance’, Humanitas. The Journal of the George Bell Institute 10:2 (2009)
Full text available on SAS-Space [link: http://hdl.handle.net/10065/2062].

(with Ian Jones), "New Music and the 'Evangelical Style' in the Church of England 1958-1990" in Mark Smith (ed.), British Evangelical Identities (Carlisle, Paternoster Press, 2009).

"The "revival" of the visual arts in the Church of England, c.1935-c.1956", in Studies in Church History 44 (2008).

"'Beauty, utility and "Christian civilisation": the Church of England and war memorials, 1940-47', in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 44;2 (2008) 199-211. Also available online to subscribing institutions.

(co-authored with Ian Jones, Director of the St Peter's Saltley Trust), "Expressions of Authenticity: Music for Worship" in Jane Garnett, Matthew Grimley, Alana Harris, William Whyte, Sarah Williams (eds), Redefining Christian Britain: Post-1945 perspectives (SCM Press, 2007)

(with Ian Jones), 'Anglican "Establishment" Reactions to "Pop" Church Music in England, c.1956-1991' in Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (eds), Elite and Popular Religion (Studies in Church History 42, 2006) pp.429-441. [Full text available on SAS-Space.]

(with Ian Jones), 'The Theological Problem of Popular Music for Worship in Contemporary Christianity', Crucible, 2006 (July-Sept) 9-16.

Four entries in Encyclopedia of Puritanism (edited by Francis J. Bremer and Tom Webster, ABC-Clio, 2006). The entries are 'Music', 'The Psalms', 'The Bay Psalm Book' and 'Thomas Sternhold'.

Recent reviews

Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme [on the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter] and Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England [on John Marbecke] in Reviews in History, 2009.
Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford, 2007), in Reviews in History, 2008.
Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow, Pearson, 2006), in Reviews in History, 2007.
Euan Cameron, Interpreting Christian History: The Challenge of the Churches' Past (Oxford, 2005), in Reviews in History, 2006.

Forthcoming Publications

'The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the censorship of the theatre, 1909-49', to appear in Studies in Church History 48 (2012).

A book-length study on Archbishop Michael Ramsey is under contract with Ashgate. It is due to appear in 2010/2011.

A collection of essays on The Search for Authority in the European Reformation (edited with Elaine Fulton and Helen Parish) is under contract with Ashgate. In it will appear an essay of my own, entitled: "'Augustine falleth into dispute with himself': the Fathers and church music in Elizabethan and early Stuart England."

Web-logs

In June 2007 I started up a blog for the discussion of Theology and the arts in Britain since 1945.

 

Recent and forthcoming conference and seminar papers

July 2011, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (conference on Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century)

'Michael Ramsey and evangelicals in the Church of England, 1961-74'

July 2010, Ecclesiastical History Society, St Andrews

'The Archbishops of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the censorship of the theatre, 1909-47'

November 2009, Christianity and History Forum, IHR

Dorothy L. Sayers and the "Christian writer" in England, 1930-1950

June 2008, conference on George Bell, Bishop of Chichester (University of Chichester)

'George Bell, John Masefield and "The Coming of Christ" (1928): context and significance'

June 2008, Anglo-Catholic History Society, AGM

'Anglo-Catholicism and the Arts in Britain 1918-1970'

May 2008, Locality and Region seminar, IHR

'Beauty, utility and "Christian civilisation": bombed churches, the Church of England and the memorialisation of war, 1940-50'.

July 2006, Ecclesiastical History Society, Cardiff

'The "revival" of the visual arts in the Church of England, 1935-1955'

Nov 2005, Modern Religious History seminar, IHR

'Theology, the arts and cultural change in the Church of England, 1940-1970: the patronage of Walter Hussey'

Nov 2005, Study day of the Study Group on Christianity and History, IHR

(with Ian Jones), 'Church Music New and Old: The Presence of the Past in English Church Music, c. 1945 to the Present'

Sept 2004 European Reformation Research Group, Northampton

'The flow of ideas from continental to English Reformations; the case of church music, 1550-1650'

 

Peter's publications in SAS-Space

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