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Sir Charles Kingsley Webster was born in 1886 and educated Merchant Taylors' School in Crosby and King's College, Cambridge, where he studied diplomatic history, and remained until 1914. His career as historian involved research, teaching and advisory work concerning international and current affairs. He married Nora Violet in 1915 and was made KCMG in the new year's honours list in 1946.
During the First World War Webster served as a Subaltern in the Royal Army Service Corps, 1915-1917 and on the General Staff of the War Office, 1917-1918. After the war he continued his involvement with diplomatic and current affairs and undertook various advisory roles. These included; Secretary, Military Section, British Delegation to the Conference of Paris, 1918-1919; Foreign Research and Press Service, 1939-1941; Director, British School of Information, New York, 1941-1942; Foreign Office, 1943-1946; Member of British Delegation, Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco Conferences, 1944-1945; Member, Preparatory Commission and General Assembly, United Nations, 1945-1946.
Webster's academic career included the following posts; Professor of Modern History, Liverpool University, 1914-1922; Wilson Professor of International Politics, University of Wales, 1922-1932; Ausserordentlich Professor, University of Vienna, 1926; Nobel Lecturer, Oslo, 1926; Reader, University of Calcutta, India, 1927; Professor of History, Harvard University, USA, 1928-1932; Ford Lecturer, Oxford University, 1948; Stevenson Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1932-1953.
He also worked to promote international co-operation between scholars, as President, 1950-1954, and Foreign Secretary, 1955-1958, of the British Academy. As President (1950-1954) he represented the British Academy in the Union Académique Internationale from 1948 to 1959. He was also energetic in the International Congress of Historical Sciences, with which he had been associated since 1913, presiding at the Stockholm meeting in 1960.
He retired from full time academia in 1953 and died in 1961.
Publications: The European alliance, 1815-1825 (University of Calcutta, 1929). The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 (Foreign Office Historical Section, London, 1919). Editor of Britain and the Independence of Latin America, 1812-1830 (Ibero-American Institute of Great Britain, London, 1938). The art and practice of diplomacy (LSE, London, 1952). British Diplomacy, 1813-1815 (G Bell and Sons, London, 1921). British Foreign Policy since the Second World War; The Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, and the Conference of Paris, 1919 (London, 1923). The foreign policy of Castlereagh, 1815-1822 (G Bell and Sons, London, 1925). The foreign policy of Palmerston, 1830-1841 (G Bell and Sons, London, 1951). The founder of the national home (Weizmann Science Press of Israel, 1955). The League of Nations in theory and practice (Allen and Unwin, London, 1933). The pacification of Europe, 1813-1815 (1922); Palmerston, Metternich and the European system, 1830-1841 (Humphrey Milford, London, 1934). Sanctions: the use of force in an international organisation (London, 1956). Some problems of international organisation (University of Leeds, 1943). What the world owes to President Wilson (League of Nations Union, London, 1930). The strategic air offensive against Germany, 1939-1945 (London, 1961). Editor of British diplomatic representatives, 1789-1852 (London, 1934). Editor of Some letters of the Duke of Wellington to his brother, William Wellesley-Pole (London, 1948).