Andrew Thorpe

He went on to be Exeter's Director of Research for Humanities and Social Sciences before moving to the University of Leeds in 2019.

Historian Helen McCarthy calls Thorpe "One of the historical profession’s leading authorities on British party politics in the twentieth century.

The subject of the book has been the topic of his taught undergraduate module of the same name at the University of Exeter and is the product of over five years research.

Reviewer Keith Laybourn calls it a "pioneering work" stating: Reviewer Duncan Tanner states, "As a result of this unparalleled research effort, Thorpe convincingly refutes the claim that the Conservatives were uniquely distracted by the needs of the country [i.e. that the Conservative Party withered away, contributing to their election defeat of 1945, because Conservatives were engaged in waging the war whilst Labour were engaged in party politics].

[4] Currently Professor Thorpe is working on the biography of Labour leader and Nobel prize winner Arthur Henderson.