Simon Hall

Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His research interests lie in the post-war social and political history of the United States – with a particular focus on the civil rights and Black Power movements; the student radicalism of the 1960s; and political dissent during the 1970s and 1980s.

Simon’s book, 1956: The World in Revolt, was published by Faber in the UK and Pegasus Books in the US in 2016. Praised by Nicholas Blincoe, in the Daily Telegraph, as a ‘cinemascope epic, packed with detail’, 1956 has subsequently been translated into German, Dutch, Polish and Chinese.

Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s, published by Faber in 2020, shows how Fidel’s iconic trip to New York, in September 1960, for the opening of the UN General Assembly, was a foundational moment in the trajectory of the Cold War, a turning point in the history of anti-colonial struggle, and a launching pad for the social, cultural and political tumult of the decade that followed. Dominic Sandbrook of the Literary Review says: ‘with its cool judgements and bleak comic sense of irony, Hall’s book is a pleasure to read.’

His next book, Three Revolutions, will be published by Faber in 2023.