Hugh Brogan was educated at Repton School and Cambridge. He worked on the Economist for two years before his first visit to the United States as a Harkness Fellow in 1962. He was a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, for the period 1963–74 and thereafter, until his retirement in 1998, taught at the University of Essex (he was R. A. Butler Professor of History for the period 1994–8). His works include a study of Alexis de Tocqueville, Tocqueville (1973), The Life of Arthur Ransome (1984), Mowgli’s Sons: Kipling and Baden-Powell’s Scouts (1987) and Kennedy (1996). His most recent work is Signalling from Mars: Selected Letters of Arthur Ransome (1997).