Career Details

Richard Cust is a Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Birmingham. He was an undergraduate at Queen Mary College University of London, and a postgraduate at Bedford College, University of London. There he was supervised by Professor Conrad Russell and produced a 1984 PhD thesis on ‘The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626-1628.’ He was appointed to a lectureship in the Modern History Department at Birmingham in 1978 and has worked there ever since.

Current Research

Richard Cust is currently working with Dr Andrew Hopper on an AHRC funded research project on ‘The High Court of Chivalry 1634-1641’. The aim is to produce a calendared edition of the court’s records to be made available on a web site in 2006 and in book form as a publication of the Harleian Society. Andy and I then aim to analyse this material and produce a series of studies on topics relating to honour and gentility. So far most of our work - including joint presentations at the Institute of Historical Research and the Cultures of Violence Conference at York in 2005 - has focussed on duelling in early Stuart England and the court’s efforts to curb the practice.

Past Research

Most of Richard Cust’s published work hitherto has been on the political history of Charles I’s reign, culminating in my 2005 book, Charles I. A Political Life(Longman/Pearson)

Teaching

Richard Cust’s teaching covers a full range of undergraduate and MA courses, mainly focusing on the political and local history in 16th and 17thc. England. He teaches a Special Subject on the English Civil War and Local Society, an option on Charles I and Early Modern Kingship, a Group Research course on Women and the English Revolution and he concentrates on gentility and political culture in the MA on Shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon and the Cultural History of Renaissance England and on the Reformation at royal courts and in the towns in the MA on Reformation and Early Modern Studies.

Postgraduate Supervision

Richard Cust has supervised a wide range of doctoral dissertations topics relating to English political, religious and cultural history in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
The topics he is currently supervising include:
‘Images of the Royal Court under Queen Elizabeth’
The Lieutenancy and Elizabethan Warfare 1585-1603’
‘Urban gentility in Stratford upon Avon 1560-1640’
‘Thomas Hall and his Library: a Puritan Minister in the English Revolution.’

Select Publications

Politics, Religion and Popularity (Cambridge, 2002) (edited with Thomas Cogswell & Peter Lake)

Charles I. A Political Biography. (Pearsons, forthcoming)

The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626-1628(Oxford University Press, 1987)

Charles I. A Political Life (Longman/Pearson, 2005)

BBC History Magazine
"An outstanding piece of work... the best life of the king yet produced".
 

Conflict in Early Stuart England (edited with Ann Hughes) (Longman, 1989)