Bernard Porter is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He has also taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Hull, and (as Visiting Professor) at Yale, Sydney and Copenhagen Universities. He is the author of ten books and many articles on a range of subjects, including British imperial history, the history of political refugees in Britain, secret policing, British attitudes to Europe, and Victorian architecture. His The Absent-Minded Imperialists (2004) won an American literary prize. He has also contributed to the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and History Today.