George Rudé (8 February 1910 ? 8 January 1993) was a British Marxist historian, specializing in the French Revolution and "history from below," especially the importance of crowds in history.<BR>Born in Oslo, Norway, the son of Jens Essendrop Rude, a Norwegian engineer, and Amy Geraldine Elliot, an English woman educated in Germany, Rudé spent his early years in Norway. After World War I, his family moved to England where he was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge. A specialist in modern languages, he taught at Stowe and St. Paul's schools. In 1932 Rude visited the Soviet Union and joined the British Communist Party three years later. During World War II he served in the London Fire Service.<BR><BR>After the war, he returned to St. Paul's but in 1949 was forced to leave because of his politics. Turning to history, he received his doctorate at the University of London in 1950 for a thesis on crowd action during the French Revolution. Unable to attain a university post because of his political leanings, he taught modern languages in English secondary schools while publishing. His first book, The Crowd in the French Revolution, soon became a classic.<BR><BR>In 1960 Rude moved to Australia where he taught at the University of Adelaide. During his "exile" down under, he published a series of works on Revolutionary and Australian history. After a year spent teaching as the first holder of the Chair of History at the University of Stirling in Scotland and another at Flinders University in Adelaide, he moved to Sir George Williams University in Montreal, Canada, in 1970.<BR><BR>After retiring, Rude returned to England, eventually dying in hospital at Battle on 8 January 1993. His widow Doreen placed his ashes in the garden behind their home in Rye. A tall, handsome and athletic man, he always retained the manners of an English gentleman as well as his left-wing sympathies.<BR><BR>Wikipedia
