Series RAS UPE/8 - 1939 - Asa Briggs

Asa Briggs won the Universities' Essay Prize whilst a student at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1941 with a BA (Arts) as well as a BSc in Economics from the University of London's Open Programme. He served in the Intelligence Corps working at Bletchley Park during World War II. After the war, he pursued an academic career at Oxford, Princeton, Leeds, Sussex, Oxford again and the Open University. In the 1976 Birthday Honours, he was created a life peer as Baron Briggs, of Lewes in the County of East Sussex. Between 1961 and 1995, Briggs wrote a five-volume text on the history of broadcasting in the UK from 1922 to 1974, essentially, the history of the BBC, who commissioned the work. Briggs' other works ranged from an account of the period that Karl Marx spent in London to the corporate history of British retailer Marks and Spencer. In 1987, Lord Briggs was invited to be President of the Brontë Society, and was also President of the William Morris Society from 1978 to 1991 and President of the Victorian Society (UK) from 1986 until his death.

He died at home in Lewes at the age of 94 on 15 March 2016.