Warwick Professors Awarded Two of UK’s Highest Cultural Honours

Two professors, the poet David Morley and the historian Peter Marshall, from the University of Warwick have this week been awarded two of the UK's highest honours in arts and culture. The recognition of arts and culture in Coventry comes as plans get under way for the city's year of UK City of Culture, of which the University of Warwick is a principal partner. Professor Peter Marshall, of Warwick's Department of History was awarded the prestigious Wolfson History Prize for his book, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation, and joins previous winners including Mary Beard and Antony Beevor after being selected from over 150 works. David Morley, a Professor from the Warwick Writing Programme - the UK's No.1 ranked creative writing course, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) joins other Fellows, including J.K. Rowling and Hilary Mantel, as one of UK's most distinguished writers - and chose to sign the Society's Roll Book with a pen once owned by Lord Byron in keeping with his being recognised for his work as a poet. Discussing Heretics and Believers Professor Marshall said: "I wanted to take a defining episode of England's past and invite people to view it in a different way. "The challenge - which I hope I managed to meet - was to acknowledge the complexity without sacrificing clarity. Monarchs, martyrs, bishops and theologians, the great and the (sometimes) good, play their parts in my story.