Richard Cobb (1917–1996) was one of the foremost modern historians of France. He served as an interpreter with British forces in France and Belgium from 1944 to 1946 and remained in France until 1955 researching his doctoral thesis, which became The People’s Armies. He subsequently taught at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Manchester University and Leeds University. He spent the rest of his life at the University of Oxford, ultimately becoming Chair of Modern History. As his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography states: ‘his idiosyncratic character, unrestrained opinions, strong likes and dislikes, and fondness for liberal, noisy entertainment gave him something of a legendary reputation among students and colleagues’.
His major works include The Police and the People (1970), Paris and its Provinces (1975) and Death in Paris (1978). He also wrote a sequence of memoirs, Still Life: Sketches from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood (1983) being a startling celebration of oddness. Perhaps above all it is as a uniquely brilliant writer of essays that he will always be valued, some of which are gathered in Paris and Elsewhere.
He won the Wolfson History Prize in 1979, and was made Commander of the British Empire and chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.