Paris and Elsewhere ─ Selected Writings

Richard Cobb (1917-1996) was born in Tunbridge Wells, the son of a minor civil servant, and educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford. A year spent in France between public school and college turned him into a committed Francophile, leading to an interest in French history. Cobb served unhappily in the British Army during the Second World War, after which he moved to France, where he stayed for many years, leading a Bohemian life while also conducting extensive research on the French Revolution in Parisian and provincial archives. He was particularly interested in documents that illuminated the lives and opinions of ordinary men and women and other people ordinarily overlooked by historians: lunatics, murderers, prostitutes, beggars, and members of the political fringe. In 1962, he became a Fellow of Balliol College; in 1973, he was appointed Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He continued, however, to spend as much time as he could in France, where he was made a member of the legion d'honneur. Cobb's many historical studies include The People's Armies and The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789-1820. He also wrote a memoir, The End of the Line, as well as many articles about French life and literature.

Richard Cobb (1917-1996) fell in love with France when he first visited in 1935. He went on to write many works of history—some in French, some in English—about the French Revolution and occupied France.