Sir Charles Alexander Petrie, 3rd Baronet (28 September 1895 - 13 December 1977) was a popular historian. Of Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

 lineage, but born in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, he was educated at Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, and in 1927 succeeded to the family baronet

Baronet

A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...

cy.

He is known for his interest in royalism and Jacobitism

Jacobitism

Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...

, and particularly for his 1926 essay in counterfactual history

Virtual history

Counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history, is a form of historiography which attempts to answer "what if" questions known as counterfactuals...

, If: A Jacobite Fantasy. Several of his books deal with Charles I

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

's government, towards which he was broadly sympathetic. He published biographies of three Spanish kings: Philip II

Philip II of Spain

Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....

, Charles III

Charles III of Spain

Charles III was the King of Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759 to 1788. He was the eldest son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife, the Princess Elisabeth Farnese...

, and Alfonso XIII

Alfonso XIII of Spain

Alfonso XIII was King of Spain from 1886 until 1931. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, was appointed regent during his minority...

, as well as one on Philip II's half-brother Don John of Austria.

In the 1930s Petrie flirted, as many others did, with the far right

Far right

Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...

. He attended the 1932 Volta Conference

Volta Conference

The Volta Conference was the name given to each of the international conferences held in Italy by the Royal Academy of Science in Rome, and funded by the Alessandro Volta Foundation...

 (of fascists and sympathisers). His 1933 book Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

, laudatory on the whole, was published in German in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

. He joined in 1934 the January Club

January Club

The January Club was a discussion group founded in 1934 by Oswald Mosley to attract Establishment support for the movement known as the British Union of Fascists....

 of supporters of Oswald Mosley

Oswald Mosley

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...

. At the same time he remained publicly hostile towards Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, very consistently; and his later view of Mosley (as expressed in his 1972 memoir A Historian Looks at his World) was thoroughly unflattering.

Among Petrie's journalistic posts was that of literary editor for the generally conservative

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 New English Review. He supported (despite some reservations) General Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

, and was a friend of a leading pro-Franco diplomat, the 17th Duke of Alba

Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba

Don Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart y Falcó, 17th Duke of Alba de Tormes, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish noble, diplomat, politician and art collector...

. Along with NER editor Douglas Francis Jerrold, Petrie formed in 1937 a group concerned to put the Nationalist case on the fighting in the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

. After 1945 he edited the Household Brigade Magazine, and wrote regularly for the Illustrated London News

Illustrated London News

The Illustrated London News was the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper; the first issue appeared on Saturday 14 May 1842. It was published weekly until 1971 and then increasingly less frequently until publication ceased in 2003.-History:...

, in addition to being co-editor (with Jerrold) of the New English Reviews short-lived successor, English Review Magazine.

During the late 1930s Petrie was a supporter of Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain

Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...

, though subsequently he was an adherent of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

. In 1941 he attempted unsuccessfully to be adopted as Conservative Party candidate for Dorset South. He was rejected, according to Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts is an English historian and journalist.-Background:Roberts was born in London, England, the son of Simon from Cobham, Surrey, and Katie Roberts...

 in Eminent Churchillians, because he was too closely identified with appeasement

Appeasement

The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...

.

Works

• The History of Government (1929)
• The Jacobite Movement (1932)
• Monarchy (1933)
• The Stuart Pretenders-A History of The Jacobite Movement, 1688-1807 (1933)
• Mussolini (Leipzig, 1933) in German
• The History of Spain (1934) with Louis Bertrand
• Spain (1934)
• The Letters Speeches and Proclamations of King Charles 1 (1935)
• The Four Georges A Revaluation of the Period From 1714-1830 (1935)
• William Pitt (1935)
• Walter Long and his times (1936)
• Lords of the Inland Sea: A Study of the Mediterranean Powers (1937)
• Bolingbroke (1937)
• The Stuarts (1937)
• The Chamberlain tradition (Right Book Club 1938)
• The Life and Letters of The Right Hon. Sir Austen Chamberlain K.G., P.C., M.P: 2 volumes (1939/1940)
• Joseph Chamberlain (1940)
• Louis XIV (1940)
• Twenty years' armistice-and after : British foreign policy since 1918 (Right Book Club 1940)
• When Britain Saved Europe (1941)
• George Canning (1946)
• Diplomatic history, 1713-1933 (1947)
• The Private Diaries (March 1940 to January 1941) of Paul Baudouin (1948) translator
• Earlier diplomatic history, 1492-1713 (1949)
• The Jacobite Movement. The First Phase 1688-1716. London: Eyre, 1948
• The Jacobite Movement. The Last Phase, 1716-1807.(1950)
• Chapters of Life (1950)
• The Duke of Berwick and His Son; Some Unpublished Letters and Papers (1951)
• Monarchy in the Twentieth Century (1952)
• The Marshal Duke of Berwick ; The Picture of an Age (1953)
• Lord Liverpool and his Times (1954)
• The Carlton Club (1955)
• Wellington (1956)
• The powers behind the Prime Ministers (1958)
• The Jacobite Movement (1958) revision
• Daniel O'Conor Sligo: His Family and His Times (1958)
• The Spanish Royal House (1958)
• The Victorians (1960)
• The Modern British Monarchy (1961)
• King Alfonso XIII and His Age (1963)
• Philip II of Spain (1963)
• Scenes of Edwardian Life (1965)
• Don John of Austria (1967)
• Great Beginnings In The Age Of Queen Victoria (1967)
• The Letters of King Charles I (1968)
• The Drift to World War, 1900-1914 (1968)
• King Charles III of Spain: An Enlightened Despot (1971)
• A Historian Looks at His World (1972)
• The Great Tyrconnel: A Chapter in Anglo-Irish Relations (1972)
• King Charles, Prince Rupert, and the Civil War: from original letters (1974)