Robert Poole (historian)

Earthrise and the space age

Poole's best-known book is "Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth" (Yale University Press, 2008), a study of the first views of Earth from space and their impact, which has been identified as one of the key works of the 'new aerospace history'. He has lectured on 'Earthrise' and the cultural history of the space age in London, Washington, DC, Lucerne, Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen, broadcast on US public radio, and in July 2009 wrote the op ed piece for the 'LA Times' on the fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing . Subsequent articles have explored the science fiction writer and techno-prophet Arthur C. Clarke, the 'apeman, spaceman' theme in '2001: a Space Odyssey', and the myth of progress in '2001: a Space Odyssey'. Another recent article, 'What was Whole about the Whole Earth?', provides a missing chapter to 'Earthrise'. In early 2016 he enjoyed a Short-Term Visitor Award at the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, to look at the recently-acquired papers of Arthur C. Clarke.

Peterloo and popular protest

Poole's principal field is the history of British popular politics and culture in the industrial revolution period, particularly the 1819 Peterloo massacre in Manchester, on which he has written articles in Past and Present, History, and Labour History Review. He was historical advisor to Manchester City Council on the 2007 memorial plaque to Peterloo, and to the John Rylands Library, Manchester, on the inclusion of the Peterloo Relief Fund Book on the UNESCO 'Memory of the World' register. In 2013-15 he was engaged on a British Academy funded project to explore and catalogue a section of the Home Office Disturbances Papers in the National Archives, the main source for the study of British radicalism and protest in this period, where he currently co-supervises a research student under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Programme. He has given numerous public lectures and workshops, including the Manchester Histories Festivals, and has appeared on several television programmes including Elegance and Decadence: the Age of the Regency episode 3 (BBC, 2011), How the North was Built Part 1 (ITV, 2013), The Real Mill (Channel 4, 2014), and the BBC Schools Programme Exploring the Past (2015), in which a school student explored site of Peterloo. He is editor of a special edition of the Manchester Region History Review entitled Return to Peterloo, contributing essays including 'What Don't We Know About Peterloo?'; a full-scale book is in preparation. He also features in the Radio 4 programme 'The Radical North', part of the 2016 series The Matter of the North. He is also engaged in a long-running biography of the Lancashire radical Samuel Bamford, on whom he has written several articles (several of them available online).

Early modern England

In 2011 Poole produced an accessible edition of The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster (Carnegie, 2011), the original 1612 account of the trial of the Lancashire (or Pendle) witches. The introduction gave the definitive account of England's biggest peacetime witch trial, summarised in an essay for the Public Domain Review. He was editor of "The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories" (Manchester University Press 2002), a multidisciplinary book of essays. He has also written "Time's Alteration: Calendar Reform In Early Modern England" (UCL Press/Taylor and Francis, London, 1998), which explains the British calendar reform of 1752 and refutes the myth of riots over the missing eleven days. He explained this on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'In Our Time'. He has contributed two articles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: John Collier ('Tim Bobbin') 1708-1786, and William Holder 1616-1698).