Winstanley, Denys Arthur (1877-1947), historian

Denys Arthur Winstanley was born in London and attended Trinity College, Cambridge as an Entrance Scholar, reading history between 1897 and 1902. He was Lightfoot Scholar in 1901. From 1903 to 1906 he was a Schools Inspector at Durham, but returned to Trinity in 1906 and from then until 1914 was a Trinity Fellow and Lecturer in history. During the First World War, Winstanley worked in intelligence in Egypt. In 1919 he returned to Trinity as History Tutor, was appointed Senior Tutor in 1925, and became Vice-Master of Trinity College in 1935, serving until his death in 1947.

Dr Winstanley's publications fall into two categories: English constitutional history of the eighteenth century: 'Personal and Party Government, 1760-1766 (1910), and 'Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition' (1912); and histories of Cambridge: 'The University of Cambridge in the Eighteenth Century' (1922), 'Unreformed Cambridge' (1935), 'Early Victorian Cambridge' (1940), and 'Later Victorian Cambridge' (1947). In late 1945 he had an operation from which he never really recovered, and died at Trinity College on 20 March 1947.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography