Maurice John Cowling (6 September 1926 – 24 August 2005) was a British historian and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Early life Cowling was born in West Norwood, South London, son of Reginald Frederick Cowling (1901–1962), a patent agent, and his wife May (née Roberts). His family then moved to Streatham, where Cowling attended an LCC elementary school, and from 1937 the Battersea Grammar School. When the Second World War started in 1939 the school moved to Worthing and then from 1940 to Hertford where Cowling attended sixth-form. In 1943 Cowling won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, but was called up for military service in September 1944, where he joined the Queen's Royal Regiment. In 1945, after training and serving in a holding battalion, he was sent to Bangalore as an officer cadet. In 1946 Cowling was attached to the Kumaon Regiment and the next year-and-a-half he travelled to Agra, Razmak on the North-West Frontier and Assam. As independence for India neared in 1947, Cowling was dispatched to Egypt as a camp adjutant to the British HQ there. Cowling was then promoted to captain in Libya. By the end of 1947 Cowling was finally demobilised, and in 1948 he went back to Jesus College to complete his History Tripos, where he received a Double First. Cowling later remembered that he fell in love with Cambridge. He toyed with the idea of being ordained and went to college chapel, possessing "a strong polemical Christianity". Of his religion, Cowling later said: In 1954 Cowling worked at the British Foreign Office for six months at the Jordan department, and in early 1955, The Times gave him the job of foreign leader-writer, which he held for three years. In 1957 Cowling was invited by the Director of the Conservative Political Centre to write a pamphlet on the Suez Crisis; it was never published however, as the party wanted to move on from Suez as quickly as possible. He stood unsuccessfully for the parliamentary seat of Bassetlaw during the General Election of 1959 for the Conservative Party. Cowling later said that "I enjoyed being a candidate, though it was very hard work and elections are like what I imagine having all your teeth out is like". Academic career In 1961 Cowling was elected a Fellow of Jesus College and Director of Studies in Economics, shortly before the History Faculty appointed him to an Assistant