Sean Gabb

Early life and education

Gabb attended a comprehensive school in South East London, and later studied at the University of York, from where he graduated in History in 1982. In 1998 he gained a PhD in History from Middlesex University.

Academia

Between 1990 and 1992, he worked in Czechoslovakia as Economic and Political Adviser to Ján Čarnogurský, the Christian Democratic Prime Minister of Slovakia. He wrote for the English-language Prague Post and widely for the Czech and Slovak media on economic reform. He co-wrote the 1992 election programme for the Slovak Christian Democratic Movement (Slovak: Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie, KDH).

He has taught at a number of universities, including London Metropolitan University. During the 1990s, he wrote several books and journal articles about truancy. These included a British Government report published by Her Majesty's Stationary Office., and a study of truancy in the United States. More recently, he wrote a book about the law of homeschooling in the United Kingdom. He was also a director of the Sudan Foundation which existed "to promote better relations between the British and Sudanese peoples." He resigned from this post in January 1999.

He is currently a Professorial Fellow and Professor of Classical Studies and Tutor in Law and Politics at and Fellow of the Western Orthodox University, and Director of the School of Ancient Studies.

The Libertarian Alliance

Gabb joined the Libertarian Alliance in December 1979. He became its Director in February 2006, shortly before the death of its founder Chris Tame, whose obituary he wrote for The Independent in April 2006. He retired from this role in June 2017.

Novelist

Gabb is perhaps best known as a writer of historical novels, for which he mostly uses the pseudonym "Richard Blake." In 2006, he wrote The Column of Phocas, a thriller set in the 7th century Byzantine Empire. After trying, without success, to find an agent to represent him, he brought this out under his own name and through his own publishing company, The Hampden Press. The book was subsequently rewritten and published in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton as Conspiracies of Rome, under the name "Richard Blake". Five more novels in the same series have been published by Hodder & Stoughton under the name Richard Blake: The Terror of Constantinople (2009), The Blood of Alexandria (2010), The Sword of Damascus (2011), The Ghosts of Athens (2012), and The Curse of Babylon (2013). In 2015, these were republished in two omnibus editions – Death of Rome Saga, 1-3 and Death of Rome Saga, 4-6. In 2015, Endeavour Press published two further historical novels, Game of Empires and Death in Ravenna. All of these are set in the Byzantine Empire of the 7th century. The novels have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, Slovak and Greek.

The first six of these novels are told in the first person by an Anglo-Saxon called Aelric. The general convention is that he is writing his memoirs in extreme old age, and all the novels describe the adventures he had in early manhood. These take him to all the cities mentioned in the titles, and give a highly personal view of the interlocking crises that beset the Byzantine Empire between the usurpation of the tyrant Phocas in 602AD and the first siege of Constantinople by the Arabs in the 660s.

The last two are the opening instalments of a new series, set in the same period. These are told in the third person, and feature Roderic of Aquileia, a Gothic boy who is recruited into the Byzantine secret service.

Political writings

Although he is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance, Gabb’s political opinions are varied. He is most easily described as a free market libertarian. In social matters, Gabb is for the legalisation of drugs, the right to keep and bear firearms for defence, and both gay marriage and gay adoption. However, he is opposed to any kind of anti-discrimination laws, and defends the right to speak in open criticism of homosexuality. He advocates a statute of limitations to block prosecutions after a certain time where the only evidence is oral testimony: this would, among much else, prevent most "historic child abuse" cases from going to trial. He is opposed to drink-driving laws per se, though believes that anyone who causes harm by dangerous driving should be severely punished.

He has written extensively in defence of freedom of speech. These defences cover the right to free expression of pornographers and The Sun newspaper and the British National Party and holocaust deniers and Anjem Choudary. At the same time, he has written critically of anti-semitism and anti-semites.

He is opposed to mass-immigration, although he has spoken in at least one debate organised by an Islamic group, in which he called on the audience to embrace freedom of speech and English classical liberalism. He also spoke in a BBC Radio debate, broadcast in December 2015, in favour of the right of Michael Adebolajo, the murderer of Lee Rigby, to sue his jailers for assault.

From 1999 to 2001, Gabb kept a website called the "Candidlist," which named UK Members of Parliament who held Europhile views.

Other writings

Gabb's first acknowledged work is a play, in English and Latin verse, The Trial of Jeremy Thorpe (1979). In 2009, he wrote a critique of what he called the "non-poetry" of Carol Anne Duffy. He has written extensively on the Ancient World. Examples include his work on the pronunciation of Greek by the Romans (2002), his biography of Epicurus, and his critique of Karl Polanyi, who claimed that market behaviour was unknown in the Ancient World.