William Fiddian Reddaway

Educated at The Leys School and King's College, Cambridge, he became a Fellow of King's in 1897 and later taught at Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge. He built his reputation as a historian of Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, combining university teaching with a steady output of books and edited volumes.

His published work included studies such as The Monroe Doctrine, Problems of the Far East, Documents of Catherine the Great, The Expansion of Russia in East Asia, 1857–1860, and The Cambridge History of Poland. He is especially associated with historical writing on Prussia, Poland, and the Romanov world, and with helping English readers approach those topics through clear narrative history.

A painted portrait of him by Philip de László survives at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, reflecting the standing he achieved in academic life. Although not a household name today, his career shows the range of an early 20th-century historian whose work linked Cambridge scholarship with a wider reading public.