Charles Read (historian)
Charles Read is a British economic historian who teaches at the University of Oxford. He has written two books and also writes and edits for The Economist.
Early life and education
Read was born in London and is of English, Welsh, Armenian and Ethiopian ancestry. He completed his BA, MPhil and PhD degrees at Christ's College, Cambridge with a focus on economic history, with his doctoral research garnering four academic prizes.Career
Read was a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he taught economics and history and served as director of a bridging course. He also served as junior proctor of the university for the 2023/24 academic year.In 2024, Read transferred to Oxford University where he is currently a senior tutor and tutorial fellow at Regent's Park College, Oxford.
He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Read has written and edited for The Economist.
Liz Truss government and September mini-budget
Read appeared in national media in February 2023 in relation to the United Kingdom's September 2022 "mini" budget, after a tweet of his was shared 1,400 times. In his tweet, Read challenged the Prime Minister Liz Truss's claim that she had not been formally warned about the effects of her government's budget by pointing to his own letter the previous September to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, as well as a lecture he had given to the Treasury, warning about the problems the UK faced in 1847 and the parallels with the then current situation.Read claimed to foresee the resulting collapse because his book on the Great Irish Famine describes a similar situation to that recreated by Truss's government.