David Nicholas Cannadine was born in Birmingham on 7 September 1950 and attended King Edward VI Five Ways School.

[8] Cannadine has held many other visitorial appointments: at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (twice), at Birkbeck College, London, at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale, at ANU Canberra, at the NHC North Carolina, at the Huntington Library and at New York University Stern School of Business.

[9] Cannadine's books include The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990); G. M. Trevelyan: A Life in History (1992); Class in Britain (1998); Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2001); Mellon: An American Life (2006); The Thirty Year Rule (jointly, 2009); The Right Kind of History (jointly, 2011); and The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond our Differences (2013).

His most recent publications are Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906 (2018), published for the Penguin History of Britain series, as well as two edited volumes on Westminster Abbey and on Anthony Blunt.

[citation needed] Cannadine has served as a vice-president of the Royal Historical Society (1998–2002) and as a member of the advisory council, Public Record Office, subsequently National Archives (1999–2004); as a trustee and vice-chairman of the Kennedy Memorial Trust (1999–2010); as a trustee, vice-chair and chair of the National Portrait Gallery[12] (2000–12); as a commissioner of English Heritage (2001–09) and as Chairman of its Blue Plaques Panel (2006–13); as a member of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee (2004–14); and as chair of Churchill 2015 (2013–15).

[16] Currently, Cannadine serves as a member of the Bank of England Banknote Character Advisory Committee; he is a trustee of the Rothschild Archive, the Gordon Brown Archive and Gladstone's Library; and of the Library of Birmingham Development Trust, the Royal Academy Trust, Historic Royal Palaces and the Wolfson Foundation.