Noel Malcolm

Last updated

Sir
Noel Malcolm
FRSL FBA
Born
Noel Robert Malcolm

(1956-12-26) 26 December 1956 (age 68)
Surrey, England
Occupation(s)Historian and journalist
Awards British Academy Medal
Academic background
Alma mater Eton College
Peterhouse, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Institutions Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
All Souls College, Oxford

Sir Noel Robert Malcolm, FRSL , FBA (born 26 December 1956) is an English political journalist, historian and academic who is a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. A King's Scholar at Eton College, Malcolm read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and received his doctorate in history from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Fellow and College Lecturer of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before becoming a political and foreign affairs journalist for The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph .

Contents

He stepped away from journalism in 1995 to become a writer and academic, being appointed as a Visiting Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, for two years. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1997 and a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2001. He was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history.

Early life and education

Malcolm was born on 26 December 1956. [1] He was educated at Eton College as a King's Scholar and studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, between 1974 and 1978. He received his PhD in history while he was at Trinity College, Cambridge. [2] [3] [ citation not found ]

Career

Malcolm was a Fellow and college lecturer at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1981 to 1988. He was a political columnist (1987–1991), then the foreign editor (1991–1992) of The Spectator , and a political columnist for the Daily Telegraph (1992–1995). He was jointly awarded the T. E. Utley Prize for Political Journalism in 1991. [3]

In 1995, he gave up journalism to become a full-time writer. [4] He was a Visiting Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1995–1996, [3] and has been a senior research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, since 2002. [5] He serves on the advisory board of the conservative magazine Standpoint . [6]

Malcolm used to be the chairman of the Bosnian Institute, London, [7] and president of the Anglo-Albanian Association. [8]

Honours

Malcolm became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1997 and a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2001. He is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. [3]

He is a Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, and an honorary fellow of both Peterhouse, Cambridge (since 2010), and Trinity College, Cambridge (since 2011). [5]

In 2013, he was awarded the British Academy Medal for his book Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. [9]

Malcolm was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history. [10] In 2016, he was awarded the Presidential Gold Medal of the League of Prizren by the president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi. [11]

Works

Books

Malcolm is the author of

Malcolm edited Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes (Clarendon Press, 2007), The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (1994) and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (three volumes, Oxford University Press, 2012), for which he was awarded a British Academy Medal. [3] He has also contributed more than 40 journal articles or chapters in books since 2002. [5]

Journalism

Malcolm has written many articles for newspapers, magazines and journals. Other than his work for The Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and Standpoint he has had articles published in The Guardian , [14] The Sunday Telegraph , [15] the New York Times , [16] the Washington Times , [17] Time [18] and the Daily Mail , [19] among other publications. He has also contributed book reviews mainly to The Sunday Telegraph. [20] He has contributed to a number of journals including Foreign Affairs [21] and the New York Review of Books . [22] [23]

Critical reviews of Kosovo: A Short History

Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History (1998) was the subject of an extended debate in Foreign Affairs. The debate began with a review of the book by Aleksa Djilas, a former Fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, who wrote that the book was "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans". [24] Malcolm responded that Djilas had not produced any evidence to counter the evidence in the book, and had instead resorted to belittling both Malcolm and his work, including the use of personal slurs and patronising language. [21] The debate continued with Serbian-born Professor Stevan K. Pavlowitch of the University of Southampton asserting that Malcolm's book lacked precision, Melanie McDonagh of the Bosnian Institute claiming that Djilas's review took a "nationalistic approach", and Norman Cigar of Marine Corps University stating that Djilas was trying to create myths to legitimise Serbian actions in Kosovo. [25] [26]

Other reviews of Kosovo: A Short History were varied. For example, in English Historical Review , Zbyněk Zeman observed that Malcolm "tries not to take sides", [27] but in American Historical Review , Nicholas J. Miller stated that the book was "conceptually flawed" by Malcolm's insistence on treating Kosovo as "a place on its own; [rather than as] a scrap of irredenta that Serbs and Albanians fight over". [28]

Later the same year, Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, reviewed the book in the Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online and, while praising aspects of the book, also asserted that it was "shaped by the author's overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths". He claimed that Malcolm was "partisan" and complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false". [29] Malcolm responded in the same journal in early 2000, asserting that the book challenged both Albanian and Serbian myths about Kosovo, but that there were more Serbian myths about Kosovo than Albanian ones and this explained the greater coverage of Serbian myths in the book. He also observed that Emmert's perspective and work were largely within the framework of Serbian historiography, and that that was the reason for Emmert's assertion that Malcolm was "partisan". [30] Emmert also criticized Malcolm's opposition to the Serbian claim to Kosovo as the “cradle of civilization”, stating that Kosovo did become the center of medieval Serbia and that such feelings among modern Serbs should not be disputed. [29] He also noted the absence of Serbian archives. [29] Likewise, Tim Judah and Misha Glenny criticized Malcolm for not using Serbian sources in the book. [22] [31] He responded that there were no proper Serbian archives for that period of history, but also noted that he had studied a large number of works by Serbian and Montenegrin authors. [22]

A 2006 study by historian Frederick Anscombe looked at issues surrounding scholarship on Kosovo such as Noel Malcolm's book. [32] Anscombe noted that Malcolm offered "a detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history" and that his work marked a "remarkable reversal" of previous acceptance by western historians of the "Serbian account" regarding the migration of the Serbs (1690) from Kosovo. [32]

Malcolm has been criticized for being "anti-Serbian" and selective with sources, while other critics have concluded that "his arguments are unconvincing". [33] The majority of the documents that Malcolm used were written by adversaries of the Ottoman state or by officials with limited experience of the region. [33] Anscombe notes that Malcolm, like Serbian and Yugoslav historians who have ignored his conclusions, have not considered indigenous evidence such as that from the Ottoman archive when composing national history. [33]

In a 2007 work, Serbian historian Dušan T. Bataković claimed that Malcolm's book about Kosovo was "notoriously pro-Albanian". [34] Frederick Anscombe has accused Bataković of writing several works in the 1980s and 1990s which advanced a Serbian nationalist perspective regarding Kosovo. [35]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "MALCOLM, Sir Noel Robert". Who's Who 2016. Oxford University Press. November 2015. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
  2. ↑ Malcolm 2000, p. 124.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Debretts 2012.
  4. ↑ Pan Macmillan 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 All Soul's College 2012.
  6. ↑ Standpoint 2012.
  7. ↑ Bosnian Institute 2012.
  8. ↑ Elsie 2010, p. 14.
  9. ↑ "British Academy launches medal for landmark research". British Academy. 14 November 2013. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  10. ↑ The Times 2013.
  11. ↑ "President Thaçi honors Sir Noel Malcolm with the presidential "Gold Medal of the League of Prizren"". President of the Republic of Kosovo - Hashim Thaçi. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  12. ↑ Malcolm, Noel (8 July 2020). Rebels, Believers, Survivors: Studies in the History of the Albanians. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-885729-7.
  13. ↑ global.oup.com
  14. ↑ Malcolm 2008.
  15. ↑ Malcolm 2001.
  16. ↑ Malcolm 1999a.
  17. ↑ Malcolm 1999b.
  18. ↑ Malcolm 1998a.
  19. ↑ Malcolm 1996.
  20. ↑ Malcolm 1995.
  21. 1 2 Malcolm 1999c.
  22. 1 2 3 Malcolm 1998c.
  23. ↑ Malcolm 2007.
  24. ↑ Djilas 1998.
  25. ↑ "List of related articles in Foreign Affairs". Archived from the original on 19 December 2013.
  26. ↑ Noel Malcolm, Aleksa Djilas, et al. "Is Kosovo Real? The Battle Over History Continues," Foreign Affairs (January/February 1999).
  27. ↑ Zeman 1999.
  28. ↑ Miller 1998.
  29. 1 2 3 Emmert 1999.
  30. ↑ Malcolm 2000.
  31. ↑ Judah 1998.
  32. 1 2 Anscombe 2006 , p. 770. "Noel Malcolm, who offers a detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history ... Here is a remarkable reversal, as Malcolm, like other Western historians, had previously accepted the Serbian account."
  33. 1 2 3 Anscombe 2006 , pp. 770–771. "Malcolm is criticized for being anti-Serbian, and for using his sources as selectively as the Serbs, though the more restrained of his critics only suggest that his arguments are unconvincing. Most of the documents he relies on were written by enemies of the Ottoman Empire, or by officials with limited experience of the Ottoman Balkans. ... Malcolm, like the historians of Serbia and Yugoslavia who ignore his findings, overlooks the most valuable indigenous evidence. Unwillingness to consider Ottoman evidence when constructing national history is exemplified by the Serbian historians..."
  34. ↑ Bataković 2007 , p. 13: "Notoriously pro-Albanian as regards the Kosovo issue is Noel Malcolm, Kosovo. A Short History (London: Mac- millan, 1998)."
  35. ↑ Anscombe 2006.

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