Maurice Ashley (historian)

He published over thirty books, of which his Financial and Commercial Policy Under the Commonwealth Protectorate (1934) achieved wide academic influence, while his biographies Cromwell (1937) and General Monck (1976) received particular praise.

[1] Ashley was educated at St Paul's School and New College, Oxford, where he won the Stanhope Essay Prize (1928, 'Republicanism in the reign of Charles II') and the Gladstone Memorial (1930, 'The rise of Latitudinarianism in the Church of England'),[2] and achieved first-class honours in Modern History in 1929.

[5] In 1929 he was appointed literary assistant to Winston Churchill, who had just begun work on his biography Marlborough: His Life and Times.

Ashley provided Churchill with original material from archives in Britain and Europe,[6] earning £300 a year for this half-time employment.

[1] Ashley's career as a journalist began when he joined the staff of the Manchester Guardian as a leader writer in 1933, moving to The Times in 1937 as a foreign sub-editor.