Academic Career
Holmes completed his MA in history at The University of Nottingham in 1964, submitting a dissertation entitled The life and work of H. S. Tremenheere.
He was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Sheffield in the now defunct Department of Economic and Social History under the headship of Sidney Pollard. During the 1970s the two worked closely on producing several volumes of documents covering European Economic History in the modern period.
However, Holmes is best known for his work on English antisemitism and migration. His book, Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876-1939, published in 1979, proved to be an inspiration for the growth of research into the area of fascism and antisemitism in the interwar period. Holmes has also written influential articles on the British editions of the notorious Protocols of Zion.
In 1988 his work on immigration to Britain was published by Macmillan. John Bull's Island: Immigration and British Society 1871-1971 is a wide ranging study of the main groups of immigrants that have entered Britain and the impact that they have had on British society. A further study was published by Faber & Faber in 1991, A Tolerant Country? Immigrants, Refugees and Minorities in Britain.
He retired from The University of Sheffield in the late 1990s and took up a research professorship at Sunderland University. Holmes still continues with his research, including his long-awaited book on William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw).
Holmes currently serves as editor of the journal Immigrants and Minorities, of which he was the founding editor in 1981.
Read more about this topic: Colin Holmes (British Historian)
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