Prothero , Sir , George Walter , 1858-1922 , Knight , Historian

George Walter Prothero was born in Wiltshire, 14 October 1848, the eldest son of Rev. Canon George Prothero, Whippingham, Isle of Wight, and Emma nee Money-Kyrle, of Homme House, Herefordshire. He was educated at Eton, King's College Cambridge and the University of Bonn. He was Bell Scholar, 1869 and obtained 1st class in the Classical Tripos, 1872.

He was Assistant Master at Eton, and university lecturer in history and tutor at King's College, Cambridge 1876-1894. In 1894 he was appointed to the newly created chair of modern history at Edinburgh University, but in 1899 moved to London to take up the editorship of the Quarterly Review. He was President of the Royal Historical Society 1901-1905.

Other appointments included; Lecturer under University Extension Scheme at Nottingham, Leicester; Rede Lecturer (Cambridge), 1903; Lowell Lecturer (Boston), and Schouler Lecturer (Johns Hopkins), 1910; Chichele Lecturer (Oxford), 1920; Governor of Holloway College, 1916; Member of Royal Commission for Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1904-1906; Director of the Historical Section, Foreign Office, 1918-1919; Member of the British Peace Delegation, 1919; Pres., Royal Historical Society; Corresponding Member of Massachusetts Historical Society; Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston); Member of Société d'Histoire Modern (Paris); Hon. LLD Edinburgh and Harvard; Officer of the Crown of Belgium, 1919.

He married 1882, Mary Frances, daughter of late Dr Samuel Butcher, Bishop of Meath. Awarded KBE 1920; MA, LittD (Cambridge); FBA 1903. Prothero died in 1922.

Publications:
Life and Times of Simon de Montfort, 1877; edited [Histoire du] siécle de Louis XIV, Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Pt. 1, Voltaire, 1694-1778 (Cambridge University Press 1879) and Histoire du siecle de Louis XIV. par Voltaire Pt II Voltaire. 1694-1778, edited by Gustave Masson, and G. W. Prothero, (Cambridge University Press 1879); Le Directoire considérations sur la révolution française, troisiéme et quatriéme parties with a critical notice of the author ... and notes ... by Gustave Masson and G W Prothero, Anne Louise Germaine Necker Staél-Holstein (Mme. de Staél), (Cambridge University Press 1881); translation of vol. I of Ranke's Weltgeschichte, 1883; A memoir of Henry Bradshaw, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and University Librarian, (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, 1888); Select Statutes and other constitutional documents illustrative of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1898); editor of Sir J. R. Seeley's Growth of British Policy, 1895; British History Reader, 2 vols 1898;
co-editor of the Cambridge Modern History, 1901-1912; editor of the Cambridge Historical Series; School History of Great Britain and Ireland (to 1910), 1912; Commemorative addresses on Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall by G W Prothero and on Edward Henry Pember by W.J. Courthope, (London, Oxford University Press. 1912); Catalogue of war publications compiled by G W Prothero with the assistance of Alex J Philip, (London, John Murray, 1916); German policy before the war (John Murray, 1917); A lasting Peace (London, Hodder and Stoughton 1917); editor of the series of Peace Handbooks issued by the Foreign Office, 1920; contributor to Encyclopædia Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography.