Obituary: Kevin Sharpe

Kevin Sharpe, who died on November 5th at the age of 62, traversed the boundaries of history, art history and English to create some of the most original and incisive studies of the Early Modern period. The son of a crane operator, he took the classic route of gifted working-class children of his generation, from grammar school to university – in his case, Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School in Rochester, Kent, followed by an open scholarship to read history at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His PhD, supervised by Hugh Trevor-Roper and published in 1979 as a monograph, pointed the way towards his later embrace of literature and art as a means of enhancing our understanding of the past: Sir Robert Cotton 1586-1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England not only studied the great antiquarian’s political career, but also examined Cotton’s relationship with poets and playwrights and the creation of his library.