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Peter Snowdon

historian from the United Kingdom

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ7177022 ↗
Source-derived summary

Peter Snowdon is a contemporary historian and journalist.

Educated at St. Dunstan's College, Durham University and the London School of Economics, he has collaborated with Anthony Seldon on a number of books, including the authorised biography of John Major, Major: A Political Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), Blair (Simon & Schuster, 2004) and Blair Unbound (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

He has written articles on the Conservative Party in several academic journals, including The Political Quarterly and Parliamentary Affairs. He has also contributed to Parliamentary Monitor, Parliamentary Brief and Newsweek. He is an occasional columnist for the Yorkshire Post and has appeared as a commentator on television and radio in the UK and abroad. He currently works for BBC political programmes, having previously worked at London Weekend Television.

Books and publications

Author, Back from the Brink: The Extraordinary Fall and Rise of the Conservative Party (September 2010)

Co-author, Blair Unbound with Anthony Seldon and Daniel Collings (Simon & Schuster, 2007)

Contributor, The Blair Effect: 2001-05 (CUP, 2005)

Contributor, Recovering Power: The Conservative Party in Opposition since 1867 (Palgrave, 2005)

Contributor, Britain Votes 2005 (edited by Pippa Norris, OUP, 2005)

Co-author, The Conservative Party: An Illustrated History (Sutton Publishing, 2004)

Principal researcher, Blair (Simon & Schuster, 2004)

Co-author, A New Conservative Century?

Editorial summary

“Peter Snowdon” enters the record as historian from the United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Peter, Snowdon and historian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 2004, 2007, 2010—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1978-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Peter, Snowdon and historian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Peter Snowdon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Peter, Snowdon and historian provides the most credible route into that argument.

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 Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7177022. VIAF identifies the subject as 163661433. The Library of Congress control number is nb2005009558. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2004, 2007 and 2010.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. 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 “Peter Snowdon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Peter Snowdon primary sources, Peter Snowdon archive and Peter 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 “Peter Snowdon”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Peter Snowdon” 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.