Michael Clanchy

Michael T. Clanchy FBA (born 28 November 1936) is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London and Fellow of the British Academy.

Clanchy taught at the University of Glasgow, and is well known for his books, such as From Memory to Written Record (1979; revised and expanded editions 1993 and 2013: a study of the triumph of literacy in medieval England), England and its Rulers 1066-1272 (1983; revised editions 1998, 2006 and 2014) and Abelard: A Medieval Life (1997). His interests are primarily in law and government in the 12th and 13th centuries. He is Patron of the London Medieval Society.

Clanchy has appeared on In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, first in 2005 regarding Abelard and Heloise, second discussing Magna Carta in May 2009.His work has been translated in a number of different languages, including French, German, Italian, and Norwegian.

• "The franchise of return of writs", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., vol. 17 (1967)
• "Did Henry III have a policy?", History, vol. 53 (1968)
• Civil Pleas of the Wiltshire Eyre, 1249 (1971)
• The Roll and Writ File of the Berkshire Eyre of 1248, Selden Society, vol. 90 (1973)
• "Moderni in education and government in England", Speculum 58 (1975)
• From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford, 1979); 2nd ed. 1993; 3rd ed. 2013
• England and its Rulers, 1066–1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity (London, 1983); 2nd ed. 1998; 3rd ed. 2006; 4th ed. 2014
• "Looking back to the invention of printing", in D. P. Resnick (ed.), Literacy in Historical Perspective (Library of Congress, D.C., 1983)
• Ranulf Glanvill, Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur, ed. and trans. G. Derek G. Hall with a guide to further reading by Michael T. Clanchy (Oxford, 1993)
• Learning to Read in the Middle Ages and the Role of Mothers, Greg Books
• Abelard: A Medieval Life (1997)
• ed. Letters of Abelard and Heloise (2003)
• "Law and theology in twelfth-century England: the works of Master Vacarius (c.1115/1120–c.1200)", Disputatio, vol. 10 (2006)
• "Did mothers teach their children to read?", in Lesley Smith & Conrad Leyser (eds), Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400 (2011)
• "Was Abelard right to deny that he had written a Book of Sentences?" Part 2, Controversy and Exchange, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 2014)