Frank Barlow CBE FBA FRSL (19 April 1911 – 27 June 2009^[1]) was an English historian, known particularly for biographies of medieval figures. His subjects included Edward the Confessor, Thomas Becket and William Rufus.

Academic life

Barlow studied at St John's College, Oxford.

He was Professor of History at the University of Exeter from 1953 until he retired in 1976 and became Emeritus Professor.^[2] He was a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature,^[3] and was appointed commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours "for services to the study of English medieval history".^[4]

Works

• The Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042-1216 (1955, 5th edition 1999)
• The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster (1962, 2nd edition 1992), editor and translator
• William I and the Norman Conquest (1965) "Men and their Times" series, edited by A. L. Rowse
• Edward the Confessor (1970, 2nd edition 1997, new edition 2011)
• The English Church, 1066–1154 (1979)
• The Norman Conquest and Beyond (1983)
• William Rufus (Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1983)
• Thomas Becket (1986)
• The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens (1999), editor and translator
• The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (2002)
• Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow (2006), edited by David Bates, Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton