Historian Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch receives honorary doctorate from University of Suffolk at ceremony in Ipswich
A leading historian whose formative years near Stowmarket set him on the path to a career as an authoritative voice on the history of Christianity has been awarded an honorary doctorate.
Prize-winning Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch has been described as ‘the most important historian of Christianity in the UK today’, enjoying an academic career spanning decades.
On Saturday, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Suffolk in a ceremony at Ipswich Waterfront.
Professor MacCulloch moved to Suffolk nearly 70 years ago at the age of four, where his father was rector of Wetherden and vicar of Haughley.
He said: “I look back on my years in Suffolk with enormous affection – this is home. My interests started with Suffolk – the very first book I published was on Tudor Suffolk, but they have rather expanded since then to the entire world.”
His work exploring the history of Christianity included several BBC documentaries, while his books have also won a host of prizes, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the British Academy Book Prize and the Cundill Prize in History.
Prof MacCulloch described his honorary doctorate as ‘a very touching honour’, paying tribute to the achievements of the University of Suffolk.
He said: “When so many universities were being founded in the 1960s, Suffolk lost out, but has now triumphantly remedied that with this wonderful institution.”
Over the years, Prof MacCulloch, who was knighted in 2012 for his services to scholarship, has maintained an interest in Suffolk, which has included a role on the Council of the Suffolk Records Society, and serving as president of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology from 2011 to 2019.
He was also firm friends with Dr John Blatchly MBE, the former Ipswich School headmaster who spearheaded the campaign for a statue of Thomas Wolsey in Ipswich.
Over the last few years, Prof MacCulloch has been a patron of the Wolsey 550 campaign celebrating the Cardinal’s work in Ipswich.
“It’s very good Ipswich is remembering Wolsey, who did so much for it and would have done more if he had not come to a slightly sticky end,” Prof MacCulloch said.
“But I also have written a biography of Thomas Cromwell, and Cromwell is an unsung benefactor of Ipswich too – he rescued the school from Henry VIII’s confiscation of the Cardinal’s college, and he is very much the Cardinal’s servant as much as Henry VIII’s servant, so when I wrote that biography I made that quite clear that Ipswich owes a lot not just to Thomas Wolsey but the other Thomas, Thomas Cromwell.”
Prof MacCulloch has now retired from teaching, but last month released a new book on sex and Christianity, titled Lower than the Angels, which he has been promoting around the UK.
He urged Suffolk’s graduating students to ‘be the best you can and remember this day because it is one of the big days in your history’.
