Professor Jerry White
Historian of London and Visiting Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London
Jerry White is a British historian who specialises in the history of London. After leaving grammar school in Dorset in 1967 he embarked upon a career in local government. Between 1989 and 1995 he was the Chief Executive of the London Borough of Hackney and between 1995 and 2009 he was one of the three Local Government Ombudsmen for England.
His discovery in November 1971 of the Rothschild Buildings in Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields led him to write an oral history of the site. As a consequence of this, he met the celebrated social historian Raphael Samuel who provided him with academic training as an historian. From 1997 onwards he has worked on a trilogy of books about London from 1700 to 2000.
Since 2009 he has been the visiting professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London.
