New Master for Trinity Hall

Professor Daunton was born in Cardiff and went to Barry Grammar School. He says this was a nursery of future historians and Masters. Other Barry pupils and staff include Sir John Habbakuk who was Professor of Economic History at Oxford, and then Master of Jesus College and Vice-Chancellor; and David Joslin was Professor of Economic History at Cambridge, the post now held by Professor Daunton. He had the same history master as Sir Keith Thomas, future Master of Corpus, Oxford and one of the greatest historians of his day. It is a good example of the strong links between Oxbridge and a small south Wales State school.

He studied at Nottingham and then Kent; taught at Durham and UCL and came to the University of Cambridge in 1997. He is now president-elect of the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of the British Academy and trustee of the National Maritime Museum. He is former Chair of the Faculty of History and currently Chairman of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

His recent work has been on the politics of taxation since 1799 in Britain. He has worked on the history of towns, on economic and social policy since 1700, completed a book on British economic history 1851 to 1951 and edited a book on the organisation of knowledge in Victorian Britain. He is currently working on the relations between domestic and international economic policy from the world of free trade and the gold standard through to current globalisation.

Trinity Hall was founded by Bishop Bateman of Norwich in 1350, making it the fifth oldest surviving College of the University of Cambridge. It was originally founded, in the words of William Bateman himself,