Asa Briggs
Daniel Snowman meets the co-founder of the University of Sussex and doyen of Victorian history.
Thought, work and progress: the key words of mid-Victorian England according to Asa Briggs. And they might stand as the personal motto of Lord Briggs of Lewes, a man whose monumental productivity as scholar, author and doer of good public works would have won him the plaudits of a Prince Albert or a Gladstone. But if the burghers of Leeds or Lewes ever decide to erect a statue of Asa Briggs, I hope they don’t make it look too earnest, for he is the most engaging of men, utterly without pretension. ‘I suppose I am a bit of a Victorian,’ he acknowledges, but with an almost schoolboyish grin which instantly offsets any suggestion of stuffiness.
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