Let's get to know Robert Smith!
Where is your favourite place on campus?
The Rutherford Library. There is still something wonderful about hunting for a particular book in a real library and stumbling upon related and perhaps even more interesting and useful volumes adjacent on the shelf.
If you were not an academic, what do you think you would be doing?
In my dreams I'd be flying to mars. in real life, I've no idea!Where did you grow up?
Leicester in England. Leicester has shot to worldwide prominence in the last few years after 1) the body of King Richard III was found under a parking lot in Leicester (where he had been buried after being killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485) and 2) Leicester City won the English Premier League, widely regarded as the hardest soccer league to win in the world. It marked one of the greatest ever upsets in the history of sports. The odds of Leicester winning the premier league were 5,000 to 1. The odds offered by bookmakers of finding Elvis alive were even lower, at only 2,500 to 1!Where did you get your BA, MA, Phd?
BA: University of London
MA (the equivalent, anyway, of an MA): University of Cambridge
PhD: University of Cambridge. The university library in Cambridge is still one of my favourite places in the world.
If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
London (3 months in the year)
Cornwall (3 months)
Jasper (6 months)
What is your favourite thing about teaching?
Getting to talk about and discuss stuff I'm really interested in and being reminded by my students there's no such thing as a finally settled account of any historical episode.What is your favourite book?
Well, I hope I'm allowed all four volumes of George Orwell's Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. Full of profound and wise things.
Would you rather ride a bike, ride a horse, or drive a car?
Am i not allowed to walk? If not, a car, preferably a Series 3 Lotus Elan. I would not feel guilty about harming the environment with its poor gas consumption because these classic British sports cars of the 1960s were terrific but broke down more often than not.When did you know you wanted to study History?
When I was a graduate student, I sat in on some lectures on the History of Science for, I thought, my general education but found the material being covered was far more interesting than my then graduate studies.If you could share a meal with any four individuals, living or dead, who would they be? (not your family)
Agnes Clerke (the greatest historian of astronomy of the nineteenth century and a personal hero)Steven Moffat (my favourite doctor who writer)
H.G. Wells
Edwin Hubble (I've written a lot on him and would like to ask how much I got right)
What is your favourite family tradition?
Going with the children to pick a Christmas tree. Chess books.
What was your first job?
A museum curator at the National Gallery and Museums on Merseyside in England. That experience and later museum work gave me an abiding interest in objects and their histories.
Thank you, Robert!