Martin Durham

Durham was born in Plymouth, England on 4 June 1951. His father Russell Durham was a mechanic, while his mother Phyllis (née Ransome) was a librarian. He attended Davenport high school.^[1][2] He was the first person in his family to attend higher education; Durham attended Birmingham Polytechnic, where he studied politics.^[1]

While in his final year at Birmingham Polytechnic, Durham was meeting a friend at a pub on 21 November 1974. During his meeting, the Irish Republican Army set off bombs in the tavern. 21 people were killed and over 180 people were injured, including Durham.^[1][3][4] The explosion sent debris into his face, which severed a nerve and cut part of his ear. The left side of his face was paralyzed in the attack and he was temporarily deafened. His friend was also injured.^[1][4][5] He had to undergo plastic surgery and was in the hospital for 13 days.^[4] He had to spend several months away from classes as a result.^[4][5]

He graduated with second-degree honours in politics from Birmingham Polytechnic in July 1975.^[5] He continued his studies at the University of Birmingham.^[1] He received his PhD from the University of Birmingham with a thesis on "Sylvia Pankhurst and Women in the Early Communist Movement".^[1]

In 1981, Durham became a lecturer at Coventry University. In 1984, he became a lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton.^[1][6] He eventually became senior lecturer of politics and American studies there. He retired from his post in 2014.^[1][7] Durham wrote on political science and was interested in a variety of political topics, especially the far-right, but also the left-wing and feminist history and abortion.^[1][8] Scholar Daniel Jones described him as "a well-known figure in Far Right Studies – in particular for his work on the role of gender within the far right".^[9] In one instance, his research got him visited by the police and his room searched. The police ultimately deemed him to not be a threat but rather an "an irrelevant bookworm".^[1]

Durham was known for his writings and scholarship on both the British and American far-right political ecosystems.^[1] While opposed to far-right political ideology, he aimed to study it dispassionately as a serious ideology and not condemn the subjects of his writings.^[1][9] He wrote four monographs in his career, and several articles.^[1][9] His first book^[6] was Sex and Politics: The Family and Morality in the Thatcher Years, which was published in 1991 by Macmillan Education.^[10][11][12] Sex and Politics took him six years to research.^[6]

He followed this up with Women and Fascism in 1998, published by Routledge.^[9][8][13] In 2000, his book The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservatism was published by Manchester University Press.^[14][15][16] In 2007, his book White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics was published by Routledge.^[17][18][19]

Durham met Stephanie West in the 1980s while employed as a lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton. They fell out of contact, but met again in the 1990s, and married in 1995.^[1] They had two children.^[1]

Durham died in 2022, aged 70.^[1]

• —— (1991). Sex and Politics: The Family and Morality in the Thatcher Years. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education. ISBN 0-333-49848-8. Published in the United States the same year as Moral Crusades: Family and Morality in the Thatcher Years by New York University Press.
• —— (1998). Women and Fascism. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-12279-1.
• —— (2000). The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservatism. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-5485-0.
• —— (2007). White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-23181-2.
• ——; Power, Margaret, eds. (2010). New Perspectives on the Transnational Right. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-62370-5.