Malcolm Thick
Malcolm Thick (1970, DPhil History) was steward of the MCR in the early 1970’s. He is a retired civil servant but has always worked as a private scholar.
His first publication was a chapter on market gardening in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. V.part ii., (1985). He subsequently wrote a book on market gardening around London in the early modern period, The Neat House gardens, early market gardening around London, (1998). His study of the life and work of Sir Hugh Plat, Sir Hugh Plat: The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London, was published in 2010. He edited/introduced new editions of The Country Housewife’s Companion by William Ellis (1750) and William Lawson’s A New Orchard and Garden (1618), in 2000 and 2003 respectively. In 2022 he published a biography of the eighteenth-century writer William Ellis – William Ellis: Eighteenth-century Farmer, Journalist and Entrepreneur.
He has made over twenty contributions to journals and collaborative works including entries in the Oxford Companion to Food (2014) and the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (2015) as well as two articles in the catalogue of an exhibition at Foundation Martin Bodmer, Geneva, Des Jardins et des Livres, ed. Michael Jakob, Geneve, (2018).
He has written two dramatic works, a play about the Somerset eccentric Thomas Coryat, who went to Venice and back, mostly on foot, in 1608, and an online pantomime produced in 2021. He has also published, for private circulation, three detective novels. At present (2021) he is completing a biography of the eighteenth-century farmer and writer, William Ellis.
Malcolm is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
