Dr Simon Ball

Head of Department and Reader in Modern History
Department of History (Modern)
Room 309
2 University Gardens
GLASGOW
G12 8QQ

Telephone: 0141 330 6463
E-mail: s.ball@history.arts.gla.ac.uk

Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 11am-12noon

Research Day: Friday

Administrative Posts

• Head of Department

Teaching

• Honours Courses:
  • Nuclear Weapons and the Cold War, 1945-1991
  • British Foreign Policy 1918-1964
• Honours Special Subject:
  • The Great War Generation and British Politics
• Postgraduate:
  • British Military Power since 1945 (MLitt in War Studies)

Research interests

• Twentieth-century British Political & Imperial History
• British Defence Policy since 1945
• The Cold War
• Matériel and Business in the Twentieth Century

Glasgow Historian provides ‘smoking gun’ for BBC Torture Investigation

Article in May's edition of History Today magazine: Divide and Rule: The Mediterranean in the Second World War

Publications

Interview on YouTube

• The Bitter Sea. London, Harper Press (16 April 2009). 978-0-00-720304-8.
• ‘Mosley and the Tories in 1930: The Problem of Generations’, Contemporary British History, 23 (2009). ISSN 1361-9462.
• ‘The Hidden Wiring: Networks, Firms and the Transfer of Electrolytic Refining Technology’. Part of a special issue on ‘Technological Innovation and Transnational Networks: Europe between the Wars’, Journal of Modern European History, 6 (2008), pp. 287-307. ISSN 1611-8944
• The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends, and the World They Made.  456 pages.  London, Harper Perennial (2005), ISBN 0-00-653163-6
• 'Banquo's Ghost: Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan and the High Politics of Decolonization' , Twentieth Century British History, 16 (2005), pp. 74-102.  ISSN 0955-2359
• '"The German Octopus":  The British Metal Corporation and the Next War, 1914-1939', Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History, 5 (2004), pp. 451-488.  ISSN 1467-2227
• 'The Macmillan Government, British Arms Exports and Indonesia', Contemporary British History, 16 (2002), pp.77-98.  ISSN 1361-9462

Further Books and Articles

• ‘The Unchanging Lessons of Battle: The British Army and the Falklands War, 1982’ in Hew Strachan, ed., Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the 20th Century (London, Routledge, 2006), pp. 145-161. ISBN 0415361966.
• ‘British Defence Policy since 1945’ in Paul Addison and Harriet Jones, eds, The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Britain (Oxford, Blackwell’s, 2005), pp. 539-555. ISBN 0-6312-2040-2.
• ‘Harry Crookshank’ in Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds, The New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, OUP, 2004).
• ‘Not Angels but Anglicised: England and the Empire, 1945-2000’ in F. Fernando-Armesto, England since 1945 (London, 2000), pp. 21-38.
• ‘A Rejected Strategy: The Army and National Service 1946-60’ in Hew Strachan, ed., The British Army: Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century (London, Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 36-48. ISBN 0-7146-5005-6.
• ‘Harold Macmillan, the Second World War and the Empire’, in Richard Aldous and Sabine Lee, eds, Harold Macmillan: Aspects of a Political Life (London, Macmillan, 1999), pp. 162-177. ISBN 0-312-21906-7.
• ‘Selkirk in Singapore’, Twentieth Century British History, 10 (1999), pp. 162-191. ISSN 0955-2359.
• The Cold War: An International History 1947-1991. 260 pages. London, Arnold & New York, OUP (1998), ISBN 0-340-64546-6.
• The Great Powers and the Division of Europe, 1943-1949, 60 Documents introduced, edited and annotated. TLTP Courseware Consortium (1998), ISBN 0-95175149-2.
• ‘Harold Macmillan and Defence Policy’, in Richard Aldous and Sabine Lee, eds, Harold Macmillan and Britain’s World Role (London, Macmillan, 1996), pp. 67-96. ISBN 0-312-12578-X.
• The Bomber in British Strategy: Doctrine, Strategy and Britain’s World Role, 1945-1960. 246 pages. Boulder, Co. and Oxford, Westview (1995), ISBN 0-8133-8934-8.
• ‘Military Nuclear Relations Between the United States and Great Britain Under the Terms of the McMahon Act, 1946-1958’, The Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 439-454. ISSN 0440-9302.
• ‘Harold Macmillan and the Politics of Defence: The Market for Strategic Ideas in the Sandys Era Revisited’, Twentieth Century British History, 6 (1995), pp. 78-100. ISSN 0955-2359.
• ‘Bomber Bases and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1945-1949’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 14 (1991), pp. 515-533. ISSN 0140-2390.

Scholarly activities

• Member of editorial board War in History
• Member of Irish Research Council in the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) International Assessment Panel