Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton (born October 21 1931 Windsor), is a British historian.

Thomas was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before taking a BA in 1953 at Queens' College, Cambridge. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.

His 1961 book The Spanish Civil War was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize. Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971) is a book of over 1500 pages tracing the history of Cuba from Spanish colonial times until the Castro revolution.

From 1966 to 1975 he was Professor of History at the University of Reading. He was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991, as an ally of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He became a life peer in 1981.

He has written pro-European political works, as well as histories. He is also the author of three novels.

Works

• The Spanish Civil War (1961)
• Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971)
• Europe: the Radical Challenge (1973)
• A History of the World (1979)
• Armed Truce (1986)
• Ever Closer Union (1991)
• Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994)
• World History, The Story of Mankind from Prehistory to the Present (1996)
• Slave Trade (1997)
• Rivers of Gold (2003)

1931 births | Living people | British historians | Life peers | Presidents of the Cambridge Union Society | Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge | Hugh Thomas | Hugh Thomas