Biography

Born Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett and educated at the Watford Grammar School for Boys, Peter Laslett studied history at St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....

 in 1935 and graduated with a double first in 1938. During the war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he learned Japanese and worked at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...

 and Washington decoding Japanese naval intelligence. It was at Bletchley Park that he met his future wife, Janet Crockett Clark, whom he married in 1947.

Returning to Cambridge in 1948 with a research fellowship at St John's College, Laslett edited Robert Filmer

Robert Filmer

thumbnail|150px|right|Robert Filmer Sir Robert Filmer was an English political theorist who defended the divine right of kings...

's political writings (Patriarcha and Other Political Writings, 1949). According to noted historian J.G.A. Pocock, it was with this work that Laslett provided the initial inspiration for the 'Cambridge School' of the history of political thought, the methods of which are now widely practised throughout the profession. Laslett combined such academic activity with a life-long concern to engage a wider audience. He worked simultaneously as a BBC radio

BBC Radio

BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...

 producer for the Third Programme. One product of this desire to reach a wider audience was his pathbreaking and highly-popular book The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age (1965; U.S. ed., 1966), issued in a second edition in 1971 and in a retitled third revised edition, The World We Have Lost: Further Explored (1983; U.S. ed., 1984). Simon Mitton

Simon Mitton

Simon Mitton is an astronomer and writer. He is based at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. He has written numerous astronomical works. The most well known of these is his biography of fellow Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle.-Career:...

 credits Laslett with having launched in 1948 the radio broadcasting career of the astronomer Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle

Sir Fred Hoyle FRS was an English astronomer and mathematician noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally...

.

In 1953, Laslett was appointed a university lecturer in history at Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, and was elected a fellow Trinity College

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 in the same year. He continued work in the history of political theory, discovering Locke's library and demonstrating (against the accepted account) that John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

's Two Treatises on Government had been written prior to the English "Glorious Revolution

Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...

" of 1688–9, remarking that the "Two Treatises is an Exclusion Tract, not a Revolution Pamphlet." Laslett published an edition of the treatises in 1960, subsequently reprinted many times, which is now recognized as the definitive account of these pillars of modern liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...

. From 1957 he founded and co-edited Philosophy, Politics and Society, a series of collections on political philosophy.

Laslett took up an entirely different line of historical research from the early 1960s. Trying to understand 17th-century listings of the inhabitants of Clayworth and Cogenhoe, Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

, he became persuaded of the need to pursue historical demography

Historical demography

Historical demography is the quantitative study of human population in the past. It is concerned both with the three basic components of population change--fertility, mortality, and migration--and with population characteristics related to those components, such as marriage, socioeconomic status,...

 more systematically. In 1964, Laslett and Tony Wrigley

E. A. Wrigley

Sir Edward Anthony Wrigley, , commonly known as Tony Wrigley, is a historical demographer. Wrigley and Peter Laslett co-founded the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure in 1964....

 co-founded the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. With funding from the Social Science Research Council

Social Science Research Council

The Social Science Research Council is a U.S.-based independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines...

, the Cambridge Group worked alongside amateur volunteers on local records, and established the journal Local Population Studies.

Laslett's practical reformism found an outlet from the 1960s in his efforts, together with Michael Young, to develop the Open University

Open University

The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...

.

When told of his family history of Kent yeomen back to 1600 he looked it over and said "Good. Not a gentleman in 400 years."

Laslett was Reader in Politics and the History of Social Structure at Cambridge University (the title reflecting his own unusual mix of historical interests) from 1966 until retirement in 1983. At this point, his interests turned to the historical understanding and practical betterment of the elderly. Laslett played a pivotal role in founding the University of the Third Age

University of the Third Age

The University of the Third Age is an international organisation whose aims are the education and stimulation of retired members of the community - those in the third 'age' of life. It is commonly referred to as U3A.- France :...

 in 1982.

He died in 2001, aged 85, and was interred at Wolvercote Cemetery

Wolvercote Cemetery

Wolvercote Cemetery is a cemetery close to the north Oxford suburb of Wolvercote, England, off the Banbury Road. Unusually, this single cemetery is divided into areas to accommodate graves of the Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as all categories of Christians. Many Russians, Poles and other...

 in 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 was survived by his wife Janet, sons George and Robert, and grandchildren, Vivian, Alden and Claire. His fine library of early printed books by and about Filmer, Locke, and political thought (including political economy) was sold by Quaritch in 2006.

Works

• The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age (1965; New York, 1966; 2d ed., 1971)
• Household and Family in Past Time (ed., 1972)
• Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (1977)
• Statistical Studies in Historical Social Structure (1979)
• Bastardy and its Comparative History (1980)
• The World We Have Lost: Further Explored (London, 1983; New York, 1984)
• Family Forms in Historic Europe (1983)
• A Fresh Map of Life (1989)
• Justice Between Age Groups and Generations (co-edited with James Fishkin, 1992).