Dr Sam Brewitt-Taylor

I’m fascinated by the way that modern cultures are shaped by myth. As a historian of 1960s Britain, I’m interested in how the myths of ‘the Sixties’ were invented, and how they influenced what people did. My current project focuses on the role of Christian commentators in inventing Britain’s ‘Sixties’, arguing that their significance has been overlooked due to the contemporary myth of ‘secularization’.

I completed my DPhil at Mansfield College, Oxford in 2013, and held lectureships at St John’s College, Lincoln College, and Plymouth University. In September 2015 I returned to Oxford to become Darby Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College.

Research Interests

• ‘The Sixties’ in Britain
• The religious crisis of the 1960s

I am interested in the religious dimensions of Britain’s ‘Sixties’, and how these affected British social and cultural development more broadly. My first article, which won Twentieth Century British History’s Duncan Tanner prize, showed that the sudden reimagination of Britain as a ‘secular society’ in the early 1960s was initially accomplished by Christians. My second, published in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History in 2015, showed that radical Christian groups made an early and significant contribution to British student radicalism. My third, published in the Historical Journal in 2016, argued that Christians made an early and important contribution to inventing Britain’s ‘sexual revolution’ in the mid-1960s.

My forthcoming monograph reconceptualises Britain’s ‘Sixties’ as an elite cultural invention, challenging the orthodox understanding of Britain’s ‘Sixties’ as a mass revolt. It argues that radical clergymen played an important early role in inventing the moral dimensions of Britain’s ‘Sixties’, but that this role has been overlooked because of the prevalence of the myth of ‘secularization’. The book has been provisionally accepted by OUP’s Oxford Historical Monographs series, and should be out in 2017 or 2018.

See page on Lincoln College website.