Celebrated First World War expert to give University talk

Margaret MacMillan is the warden of St Antony’s College and professor of international history at the University of Oxford and has published several well-regarded books on the war, the centenary of which is being recognised this year.

Most recently she published The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, an account of the events leading up to the outbreak of world war in 1914.

And on Thursday, February 13, Mrs MacMillan will give a free talk entitled  How Can We Understand the Outbreak of the First World War.

In the lecture, she will be arguing that 100 years after the event there is still no agreement on how or why the war started. 

Explanations range from national rivalries to arms races, focus on policies such as alliances and arms races, or seek to assign responsibility to particular powers or individuals. Macmillan’s lecture points out that many Europeans expected and wanted the long peace to continue and asks why war seemed a reasonable option to Europe’s decision-makers in the summer of 1914.

The event will take place in room MC001, in the University’s City Campus, from 1pm to 2pm. No ticket is required.

The great-granddaughter of wartime British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Margaret MacMillan became the fifth Warden of St Antony’s College in July 2007.

Prior to taking on the Wardenship, Professor MacMillan was Provost of Trinity College and professor of History at the University of Toronto.

She is the author of Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 which won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History.

George Kassimeris, Reader in Terrorism Studies and Political Violence at the University of Wolverhampton, said: “We are very privileged to have the Warden of one of the prestigious Oxford colleges and one of the most recognized and respected historians in the English-speaking world, coming to the University to talk to our students and staff.”

ENDS

For more information please contact Chris Jones in the Media Relations Office on 01902 322736

Date Issued: Thursday, February 6, 2014