David Kirby

David Kirby has had a long-standing interest in northern Europe ever since he sailed through the icebound Baltic in 1963. He taught for many years at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, now part of University College London, retiring in 2005 as emeritus professor of modern European history. He is the author of a two-volume history of northern Europe, The Baltic World 1492-1772 and 1772-1991 (Longmans, 1990, 1995), a History of Finland in the Cambridge Concise History series (2006) and co-author of The Baltic and North Seas (Routledge, 2000). He first encountered Ronald Seth in the 1970s and for many years wondered how and why he was parachuted as a British agent into Nazi-occupied Estonia in 1942; the opening up of MI5 and SOE archives at the National Archives enabled him to research the story more fully in Operation Blunderhead (The History Press, 2015). In his most recent book, Britain 1947. Hope Amid Hardship (Hurst & Co, 2024), he explores the ways in which the British people sought to recover from the war - a time when the promise of a better future was set against the harsh reality of austerity.