Michael John Bentley FRHistS (born 12 August 1948)[2] is an English historian of British politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
He attended the University of Sheffield, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1969, before proceeding to postgraduate study at St John's College, Cambridge.
He then moved to the University of St Andrews, where he was appointed Professor of Modern History; he is now Emeritus.
As of 2021, he is Senior Research Fellow and Stipendiary Lecturer in History at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
[3] Boyd Hilton has called Bentley's Politics Without Democracy 1815–1914 "a wonderfully 'inside' account of life at the top",[7] whilst K. Theodore Hoppen claims the book "provides an interesting (if allusive) study of attitudes".