T. H. MARSHALL: PAST AND PRESENT 1893-1981: President of the British Sociological Association 1964-1969.

This article focuses on the life and works of Thomas Humphrey Marshall, president of the British Sociological Association during 1964-1969. Marshall was born in 1893. His life and work extended virtually over the whole period of the development of sociology as an organised academic discipline in Great Britain. He began his career as a Cambridge historian, translated to the London School of Economics in 1925, emerged formally as a sociologist in 1929, and alternated thereafter between academic and public service. Marshall has formed an understanding of post-feudal or post-estate society, especially in England, and most especially from the point of view of the legal basis of the institutions of class and status which interacted to produce equalities and inequalities. He absorbed the essentials of English economic history. He stood as a Labour candidate for a safe Conservative constituency in Surrey at the General Election of 1922. He was beaten and returned to Cambridge knowing that he was not suited to a career as a politician. By his tolerant appreciation of phenomenology, exchange theory, structuralism and all the fashionable enthusiasms of the 1960s and 1970s Marshall demonstrated a model of personal professionalism. He died in 1981.