author
Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas
1853–1931
A leading voice on the British Empire, he spent decades in the Colonial Office while also writing widely read histories and geographies of Britain's colonies. His work brought together public service, scholarship, and teaching in a way that shaped how imperial history was explained to readers of his time.
2 Audiobooks
A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Vol. V Canada—Part I, Historical
by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas
A history of Canada, 1763-1812
by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas
About the author
Born in Wales in 1853, Charles Prestwood Lucas was educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford. He trained in law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1885, but his career soon centered on government service and historical writing.
Lucas became an important official in the Colonial Office, later heading the Dominion Department, and he was knighted in 1907. Alongside his civil service work, he built a reputation as a historian and geographer of the British Empire, especially through A Historical Geography of the British Colonies and other books on colonial development and Canada.
He also devoted many years to education. He taught at the Working Men's College, served as its vice-principal and later principal, and went on to become president of the Geographical Association in 1920. He died in 1931, remembered as both a senior imperial administrator and a prolific interpreter of Britain's colonial world.