| Admin History | Professor Chris Brooks (1949-2002), was one of Britain's leading cultural historians of the Victorian period, and was a former Chair of the prestigious Victorian Society. His library of primary and secondary source Victorian material was donated to the University Library in 2002. The strengths of this book collection reflect Brooks's research and teaching interests in art and architecture, literature, topography, and history.
Born in London in 1949, his family moved to Devon when he was young and, after graduating from Manchester University in 1971, Brooks joined the School of English at Exeter as a tutor in 1974. He became a lecturer in 1976, took his doctorate from Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1979, and later became a professor in Victorian studies at Exeter, where he helped lead the establishment of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, a museum and resource centre now administered through the University Library's Special Collections. As Chair of the Victorian Society in 1993, he was instrumental in securing the restoration of the Royal Albert Memorial, London, for he took an active role in historic building conservation issues on a local and national level. Chris Brooks died in 2002.
His publications include 'The Great East Window of Exeter Cathedral' (1988), 'Mortal Remains' (1988), and 'The Albert Memorial' (1995), but his 'masterpiece', according to Geoff Branwood, Chair of the Victorian Society, was 'The Gothic Revival' (1999), which 'broke new ground in examining. what the concept of the gothic meant at different times and places'. |