Noel Malcolm


Sir Noel Robert Malcolm, is an English political journalist, historian and academic. A King's Scholar at Eton College, Malcolm read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge and received his Doctorate in History from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Fellow and College Lecturer of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before becoming a political and foreign affairs journalist with The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph.
He stepped away from journalism in 1995 to become a writer and academic, being appointed as a visiting fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford for two years. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997, and a fellow of the British Academy in 2001. Since 2002, he has been a senior research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history.

Early life and education

Malcolm was born on 26 December 1956. He was educated at Eton College, an all-boys public school near Windsor, Berkshire, as a King's Scholar. He studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge between 1974 and 1978. He received his PhD degree in History while he was at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

Malcolm was a fellow and college lecturer of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 1981 to 1988. He was a political columnist then the foreign editor of The Spectator, and a political columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was jointly awarded the T. E. Utley Prize for Political Journalism in 1991.
In 1995 he gave up journalism to become a full-time writer. Malcolm was a visiting Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford in 1995–1996, and has been a senior research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford since 2002. He serves on the advisory board of the conservative magazine Standpoint.
He used to be the chairman of the Bosnian Institute, London, and president of the Anglo-Albanian Association.

Honours

Malcolm became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001. He is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. He is a Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, and an Honorary Fellow of both Peterhouse, Cambridge and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 2013, he was awarded the British Academy Medal for his book Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. Malcolm was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history. In 2016, he was awarded the Presidential Gold Medal of the League of Prizren by the President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi.

Works

Books

Malcolm is the author of:
He edited Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes, and The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, for which he was awarded a British Academy Medal. He has also contributed over 40 journal articles or chapters in books since 2002.

Journalism

Malcolm has written many articles for newspapers, magazines and journals. Other than his work for The Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and Standpoint he has had articles published in The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, the New York Times, Washington Times, Time and the Daily Mail among other publications. He has also contributed book reviews mainly to The Sunday Telegraph. He has contributed to a number of scholarly journals including Foreign Affairs and the New York Review of Books.

Critical reviews of ''Kosovo: A Short History''

Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History saw robust debate among historians following its release. For example, the merits of the book were the subject of an extended debate in Foreign Affairs. The debate began with the review of the book by the former Fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, Aleksa Djilas. He wrote that Malcolm's book was "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans". Malcolm responded by claiming that Djilas had not produced any evidence to counter that produced in the book, and had instead resorted to belittling both Malcolm and his work, including the use of personal slurs and patronising language. The debate continued with Serbian-born Professor Stevan K. Pavlowitch of the University of Southampton asserting that Malcolm's book lacked precision, Melanie McDonagh of the Bosnian Institute claimed that Djilas' review took a "nationalistic approach", and Norman Cigar of Marine Corps University stating that Djilas was trying to create myths to legitimise Serbian actions in Kosovo.
Other reviews of Kosovo: A Short History were varied. For example, in English Historical Review, Zbyněk Zeman observed that Malcolm "tries not to take sides", but in American Historical Review, Nicholas J. Miller stated that the book was "conceptually flawed" due to Malcolm's insistence on treating Kosovo as "a place on its own; a scrap of irredenta that Serbs and Albanians fight over".
Later the same year, Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota reviewed the book in Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online and while praising aspects of the book also asserted that it was "shaped by the author's overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths", that Malcolm was "partisan", and also complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false". Malcolm responded in the same journal in early 2000, asserting that the book challenged both Albanian and Serbian myths about Kosovo, but that there were more Serbian myths about Kosovo than Albanian ones and this explained the greater coverage of Serbian myths in the book. He also observed that Emmert's perspective and work was largely within the framework of Serbian historiography, and that Emmert's own perspective was the reason for Emmert's assertion that Malcolm was "partisan". Emmert also criticized his opposition to the Serbian claim to Kosovo as the “cradle of civilization”, stating that Kosovo did become the center of medieval Serbia and that such feelings among modern Serbs should not be disputed. He also noted the absence of Serbian archives. Likewise, Tim Judah and Misha Glenny criticized Malcolm for not using Serbian sources in the book. He responded that there were no proper Serbian archives for that period of history, but also noted that he had studied a large number of works by Serbian and Montenegrin authors.
In 2006, a study by Frederick Anscombe looked at issues surrounding scholarship on Kosovo such as Noel Malcolm's work Kosovo: A Short History. Anscombe noted that Malcolm offered "a detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history" and that his work marked a "remarkable reversal" of previous acceptance by Western historians of the "Serbian account" regarding the migration of the Serbs from Kosovo. Malcolm has been criticized for being "anti-Serbian" and selective like the Serbs with the sources, while other more restrained critics note that "his arguments are unconvincing". The majority of documents Malcolm uses were written by adversaries of the Ottoman state or by officials with limited experience of the region. Anscombe notes that Malcolm, like Serbian and Yugoslav historians who have ignored his conclusions sideline and are unwilling to consider indigenous evidence such as that from the Ottoman archive when composing national history.
In a 2007 work, the Serbian historian Dušan T. Bataković claimed that Malcolm's book about Kosovo was "notoriously pro-Albanian" regarding the Kosovo issue. Frederick Anscombe has accused Bataković of writing several works in the 1980s and 1990s which advanced a Serbian nationalist perspective regarding Kosovo.

Footnotes

Books

Newspapers and magazines

Websites