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Patrick Allitt

English historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ7146028
Source-derived summary

Patrick N. Allitt (born 1956) is a British historian and academic who serves as the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University. He has written seven books on religious history, education, politics and environmental history, and has produced several lectures for The Great Courses.

Early life and education

Allitt was born in 1956 in Mickleover on the outskirts of Derby in Derbyshire. He studied at Hertford College, Oxford (1974–1977), then moved to America and gained a PhD in American history at University of California Berkeley (1986).

Career

He held the Arthur Blank Chair for Teaching Excellence at Emory University and was, for five years, director of Emory's Center for Teaching and Curriculum. He is now the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

His recent publications include contributions to The American Conservative, The Spectator (London), The National Interest, and Modern Intellectual History. He is also the principal lecturer in seven of "The Great Courses" made by The Teaching Company of Chantilly, Virginia. He has spoken in many parts of the United States and lead college-level teaching workshops. In the late 1980s, he wrote a short history of American biographies of Jesus Christ.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Patrick Allitt” is english historian. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Patrick, Allitt and English, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 1974, 1977, 1986—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956-08-26. For this dossier, Patrick, Allitt and English is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “english historian” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7146028. VIAF identifies the subject as 32092576. The Library of Congress control number is n83201870. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1974, 1977 and 1986.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Patrick Allitt”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Patrick Allitt primary sources, Patrick Allitt archive and Patrick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Patrick Allitt”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Patrick Allitt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.