December 4, 1903

A. L. Rowse, (December 4, 1903 to October 3, 1997) was a British historian and a poet. He wrote a biography of Shakespeare, rather naturally since his specialty was Tudor England. Some of his book titles include, without any organizing principle of selection:

On History, a Study of Present Tendencies (1927)
Science and History: a New View of History (1928)
Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge (1937)
Tudor Cornwall (1941)
The Spirit of English History (1943)
The Expansion of Elizabethan England (1955)
William Shakespeare: a Biography (1963)
Christopher Marlowe: a biography (1964)

Windsor Castle In The History Of England (1974)
Jonathan Swift: Major Prophet (1975)
Matthew Arnold: Poet and Prophet (1976)
Homosexuals In History (1977)
A Quartet of Cornish Cats (1986)
The Poet Auden: a Personal Memoir  (1987)
Quiller-Couch: a Portrait of "Q" (1988)
The Regicides and the Puritan Revolution (1994).

Rowse was over-weight and opinionated: he deplored the loss of standards in England after World War II.  These sound like Tory sentiments on the surface, but Rowse not only ran for Parliament as a Labor politician, his childhood was quite humble; his parents have been described as semi-literate, and there were no books in their home. This was in Cornwall, a place which grips the imagination of many, and as his birthplace it was always a focus for Rowse's studies. The topic is covered in another book he wrote: Peter: the White Cat of Trenarren (1974). The book includes pictures and Rowse describes his satisfaction at living there, a manor house with wide green vistas. Peter was a white cat, kind of fluffy, and not the first cat to love an historian.