William Kent (historian of London)

William Richard Gladstone Kent FSA (1884 – 9 May 1963) was a historian of London who wrote many books on the history of the city.

He was raised in Tradescant Road, Lambeth, south London, and attended the Wheatsheaf Hall where he taught Sunday school and was highly involved in young Methodist activities.

He also watched a great deal of cricket at the nearby Oval and later wrote a book on the sport.

He lost his religious faith in his early adulthood, sometime after reading the work of Thomas Huxley on agnosticism.

His study of John Burns, whom his father had known as a boy, is his most important other work, offering a critical but witty and not unsympathetic picture of the former labour leader and cabinet minister, whom Kent often visited in the last years of Burns's life.