James Headlam-Morley
Sir James Wycliffe Headlam-Morley, CBE was a British academic historian and classicist. He became a civil servant and government advisor on current foreign policy. He was known as James Wycliffe Headlam until 1918, when he changed his surname to Headlam-Morley by royal licence. He was knighted in 1929 for public service.
Family
He was the second son of Arthur William Headlam, vicar of Whorlton, County Durham, and was the younger brother of Arthur Cayley Headlam, Bishop of Gloucester.In 1893, he married Elisabeth Charlotta Henrietta Ernestina Sonntag, a German musician and composer who was also known as Else Headlam-Morley. The historian Agnes Headlam-Morley was their daughter.
Education and career
He was educated at Eton, King's College, Cambridge, and in Germany where he studied with Treitschke and Hans Delbrück.From 1894–1900 he was Professor of Greek and Ancient History at Queen's College, London.
An influential figure, he worked on propaganda in World War I. At the end of the war, he was appointed as a Foreign Office specialist on the British Empire Delegation to the Paris [Peace Conference (1919–1920)|Paris Peace Conference]. He was involved in the drafting of the Versailles Treaty, especially regarding Danzig. He effectively sponsored Arnold J. Toynbee for appointment in 1924 to Chatham House, and Toynbee cited his views on "the geographical nucleus of the Western World" in the first volume of A Study of History. He also gathered materials on the diplomatic history of the origins of World War I as an official production of the British government and contributed to it, though the main editor was Harold Temperley. The historian Anna Cienciala attributes to Headlam and Sidney Edward Mezes, an academic and advisor to Woodrow Wilson and Executive Director of the Inquiry group, the 1919 proposal to make Danzig a free city.
He wrote numerous historical articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica editions of 1902 and 1911, signing them "J.W.He."