Robert Hume

Robert Hume was born in 1955 and grew up in Beckenham where he attended Beckenham and Penge Grammar (Langley Park) School.

At Keele University he read History and Psychology, before researching the history of education for his M.A. and Ph.D.

An experienced teacher, moderator, G.C.S.E. History examiner, 'A' level History, 'A' level Psychology and IB examiner, he began his teaching career in Kent in 1982, at the Chaucer Technology School in Canterbury.

In 1985 he moved to Tonbridge to become Head of History at Hillview School for Girls.

From 1988 to 2010 he was Head of History at Clarendon House Grammar School in Ramsgate, where he was voted 'Kent Teacher of the Year' in 1992. For many years he managed the football teams and ran the Scrabble club which won the U.K. Schools' Scrabble competition in 1999, the first Scrabble tournament in the world to be broadcast live over the internet.

Robert has lectured before audiences of teachers in Kent (where he was Secretary of the Kent History Teachers' Association between 1984 and 1989), Italy and the U.S.A.

In December 1992, as part of the 500th anniversary commemorations, he was invited to give lectures on Christopher Columbus and emigration on board the QE2.

Since 2004 he has lived in Broadstairs. Retiring from teaching in 2010, he began writing full time, and now writes features for the Southern Star, Irish Examiner and BBC History Magazine.

BOOKS

Early Child Immigrants to Virginia 1619-1642 (Magna Carta Book Company, 1986)

Education Since 1700 (Heinemann Educational, 1989)

Christopher Columbus and the European Discovery of America (Gracewing, 1992)

Religion and Society in Kent, 1640-1914 with Nigel Yates and Paul Hastings (Boydell, 1994)

Ruling Ambition. The Story of Perkin Warbeck (Gee & Son, 2000)

Death By Chance. The Abergele Train Disaster, 1868 (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch,2004)

Perkin Warbeck. The Boy who would be King (Short Books, 2005)

Dr Joseph Bell. The Original Sherlock Holmes (Stone Publishing House, 2005)

Equiano. The Slave with the Loud Voice (Stone Publishing House, 2007)

Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein (Stone Publishing House, 2009)

Thomas Crapper. Lavatory Legend (Stone Publishing House, 2010).

Clearing the Bar. One Girl’s Olympic Dream (Stone Publishing House, 2012)

The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Victims (Pen & Sword, 2019)