Philip Robert Rhys Mansel (born October 19, 1951) is a British historian of courts and cities, and the author of a number of books about the history of France and the Ottoman Empire.
Philip Mansel's first book, Louis XVIII, was published in 1981 and this – together with subsequent works such as Paris Between Empires 1814–1852 (2001) – established him as an authority on the French monarchy, a fact recognised later by his appointment as Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.
In 2016, Mansel's book Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria's Great Merchant City was released.
[7] In 1995, Mansel was a co-founder of the Society for Court Studies, together with David Starkey, Robert Oresko and Simon Thurley.
In 1995 Mansel started a campaign to save Clavell Tower, a ruined folly of 1831 which threatened to fall over the cliff above Kimmeridge Bay.