Anthony King | |
---|---|
Born | Anthony Stephen King 17 November 1934 Canada |
Died | 12 January 2017 | (aged 82)
Nationality | Canadian-British |
Alma mater | Queen's University, Ontario University of Oxford |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Government, psephology |
Institutions | University of Essex |
Thesis | Some aspects of the history of the Liberal Party in Britain, 1906–1914 |
Anthony Stephen King FBA (17 November 1934 – 12 January 2017) was a Canadian-British professor of government, psephologist and commentator. He taught at the Department of Government at the University of Essex for many years.
King was born in Canada[1][2] on 17 November 1934,[3] the son of Marjorie and Harold King.[3] He gained a B.A. in History and Economics at Queen's University, Ontario.[4][5] In the 1950s, he moved to UK as a Rhodes Scholar[1] to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, after which he gained a D.Phil.[4][2] with thesis titled "Some aspects of the history of the Liberal Party in Britain, 1906–1914".[6]
He initially taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, before transferring to Essex, from which he never officially retired.[1][7] From 1969, he was Professor of Government at Essex, where he also led a Wednesday brainstorming class of selected bright students from the Department of Government.[8] King taught the course GV100 – Introduction to Politics.[9] He also taught at Princeton and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in the United States.[8]
He regularly appeared on election results programming and analysed their implications. For each UK General Election from 1983 to 2005, he was BBC television's analyst on their election night programming.[2] On a monthly basis, he analysed political opinion polls on voting intentions for The Daily Telegraph.[2] He also wrote many books on politics and was co-editor of the Britain at the Polls series of essays and, in 2008, The British Constitution.[5]
King was co-author with David Butler of two Nuffield College election studies (those for 1964 and 1966) and author of Britain Says Yes: the 1975 Referendum on the Common Market and Running Scared: Why America's Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little.[3] He was also co-author with Ivor Crewe of the semi-official SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party[10] and The Blunders of our Governments.[1][5] He edited The New American Political System,[11] New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls 1997,[5][12] Britain at the Polls 2001[5][13] and Britain at the Polls 2005.[5]
King was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords (the Wakeham Commission).[14][15] In 2010, he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.[8][16] He also served as an associate at the Institute for Government, a non-partisan charity that aims to improve the effectiveness of central Government in the UK.[17] During the latter part of his life, his research focused on: the changing British constitution; the British prime ministership; American politics and government and the history of democracy.
King was also a member of the Academia Europaea, a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.[8]
King married twice.[3] His first wife Vera Korte, whom he married in 1965, died in 1971.[3] He married his second wife Jan Reece in 1980.[3]