Godfrey Hodgson, who has died at the age of 86, was one of the most distinguished journalists of his generation. After an impressive early academic career – Magdalen College, Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania – plus some reporting experience on the Times, he joined the Observer in 1960, and was soon recruited to be one of the proprietor/editor David Astor’s team to increase foreign coverage. Becoming the paper’s Washington correspondent.
A larger-than-life, restlessly curious fellow : my memories of Godfrey Hodgson
Hodgson, who died recently, was the Director of our Fellowship Programme from 1993 to 2001. Mark Landler pays tribute to him
Godfrey Hodgson (left) with the 1999 cohort of Journalist Fellows. Credit: Ian Henscheke
Mark Landler
Monday 1 February 2021
Godfrey Hodgson, born on 1 February 1934, died on 27 January 2021. A respected journalist and a trained historian, he wrote a number of books, most of them about American history. From 1993 to 2001 he was the Director of our Journalist Fellowship Programme. Our former Journalist Fellow Mark Landler, London Bureau Chief of the New York Times , remembers his time with Godfrey in this piece.
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The legendary Godfrey Hodgson, author of essential books and reports on the US, a journalist with The Observer and then The Sunday Times Insight Team when they were in their prime, and in later life the head of the fellowships programme at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, has died, aged 86.
This is just a note to acknowledge the remarkable series of articles, a masterclass of analysis and observation, that he wrote for openDemocracy.
The first was a month after 9/11 when he reflected on a theme that he had written about at length: that the US thought of itself as “the exceptional country”. Americans thought they had created a model for the world and believed it was only a matter of time before the rest of us, everywhere, would come to see this. Perhaps, Hodgson suggested, more in hope than expectation, the shock of the terrorist assault would finally make America realise it was not the exception after all.
Godfrey Hodgson obituary John Shirley
The journalist and historian Godfrey Hodgson, who has died aged 86, was among the most perceptive and industrious observers of his generation, particularly in the field of American society and politics.
His reputation was founded on his landmark study, America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon (1976), acknowledged by the Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle as “one of the great works of political and social history written in the past half century”. At 600 pages long and in continuous print since its first publication, it was but one item in a prolific output that ran to more than 15 books, extensive university teaching and a lifetime of newspaper and television reporting (as well as numerous Guardian obituaries). As a journalist, Hodgson reckoned he had worked in 48 of the 50 US states.