Sir Bernard Crick was the founding professor of Birkbeck’s Department (later School) of Politics and Sociology in 1971.

Crick’s three early books, The American Science of Politics (1958), In Defence of Politics (1962) and The Reform of Parliament (1964) established his reputation. His best known work was George Orwell: A Life, published in 1980. Crick established the annual Birkbeck Orwell Lecture and the Orwell Prize for political writing.

For Crick, politics was “ethics done in public”. His aphorism was another way of saying that he was an enthusiastic advocate of the unity of theory and practice. The entire raison d’être of academic politics was to forge an engaged citizenry.

Crick retired from Birkbeck in 1984, moving to Edinburgh where he was appointed Honorary Fellow of the University. His enthusiasm for active citizenship led him to the educational plans for citizenship studies in school curricula, appointed to this task in 1997 by his former Sheffield student David Blunkett, then the Secretary of State for Education. He also devised education programmes for immigrants in UK citizenship and tests for candidates seeking British naturalisation. He was knighted in 2002.