Timothy Charles William Blanning FBA (born 21 April 1942) is an English historian who served as Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge from 1992 to 2009.
He went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree and completing his doctorate there in 1967.
[1] Blanning's first book, Reform and Revolution in Mainz, 1743–1803 (1974), offered a case study that examined the "German Problem", the idea that modern Germany began moving apart from Western Europe in political and cultural terms; Blanning sought to demonstrate that this process began in the eighteenth century, whereas earlier historians had emphasised the nineteenth century as a more important period.
He has published biographies of George I (2017) and Frederick the Great of Prussia (2015),[1] the latter of which won the British Academy Medal in 2016.
[5] In September 2016, he was awarded the British Academy Medal for his book Frederick the Great: King of Prussia (2015).