author
Thomas Hodgkin
1831–1913
A banker, Quaker minister, and historian, he became one of the leading English writers on the fall of the Roman world and the early Middle Ages. His best-known work, Italy and Her Invaders, helped bring late antiquity to a wide readership.
4 Audiobooks
Theodoric the Goth: Barbarian Champion of Civilisation
by Thomas Hodgkin
The Life of Charlemagne (Charles the Great)
by Thomas Hodgkin
The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest
by Thomas Hodgkin
About the author
Born in Tottenham on July 29, 1831, he was educated at Grove House School and University College London. Although he spent much of his working life in banking in Newcastle, he steadily built a second career as a serious historian, combining scholarly research with a clear, readable style.
He is best remembered for Italy and Her Invaders, an ambitious multi-volume history of the later Roman Empire and the peoples who moved into Italy after Rome's decline. He also wrote biographies and historical studies on figures including Theodoric and Charles the Great, and his work made complex early medieval history accessible to general readers as well as specialists.
Alongside his writing, he was active as a Quaker minister, and that moral seriousness shaped much of his public life. He died on March 2, 1913, leaving behind a body of work that remained influential for students of late Roman and early medieval Europe.