Celebration of life.

This month, on 28 May, the Society’s Chief Executive Dr Robert Pirrie WS attended a Symposium and Choral Evensong at King’s College London to remember Arthur Burns, Professor of Modern History at KCL and Academic Director of the Georgian Papers Programme. Professor Burns was a speaker at one of the Society’s 2022 events to mark 200 years of the Signet Library. He was a supervisor for Robert Pirrie’s PhD at KCL.

At the Symposium, senior academics and writers in history from around the UK and US gathered to share memories of Professor Burns and his work. His wife, Sarah Stockwell, Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History at KCL, and three sons were among those attending. Professor Burns was universally admired and respected, not only for the rigour of his historical scholarship, but for his qualities of kindness, goodness, and generosity of spirit. He was on the academic staff at KCL for 30 years, having studied and obtained his PhD at Balliol College, Oxford. Professor Burns made an immense contribution at KCL and to the many other historical societies of which he was a member and in some cases a co-founder. He co-founded the Boydell and Brewer series Studies in Modern British Religious History, which has now published more than 35 volumes on this theme. He was a pioneer of digital humanities, a field in which KCL is now a global leader. Professor Burns will be forever in the memory of those who knew him as one of the very best.