Graham Smith is an oral historian working in one of the counties largest and most dynamic history departments, Royal Holloway, University of London. He teaches public history and the history of medicine, as well as oral history. Before that he worked in medical faculties at Sheffield and Glasgow.
Since 1981 he has researched, using oral history, memory and narrative in national and international contexts. Projects have included masculinity and boxing, social mobility in family and community history, gender and remembering in groups, family doctors under the National Health Service, Ukrainian migration to Britain, and memories of food.
His publications include articles in medical, historical and sociological journals. He is currently editing a four volume collection of key texts in oral history.
For pleasure, he reads a wide range of fiction including modern novels (he is a bit keen on the writing of Umberto Eco and David Peace) as well as science fiction, and crime thrillers (especially Nordic and Scottish noire). As a child he was brought up on an old-fashioned diet of Empire literature: from W.E. Johns to Buchan to Kipling to Masefield. He saved himself from becoming a complete reactionary by enjoying Robert Louis Stevenson and later, through an addiction to science fiction, Iain M Banks. He is also a fan of the graphic novel, and was an early admirer of Art Spiegelman’s Maus (interviewing Art in the mid-1980s).
Click here for more about Graham Smith, including his academic profile.
Memories of Fiction: An Oral History 