- Historian and writer. Was made a baron in 1981.
- British historian of the Spanish world, he was chairman of the Center for Policy Studies from 1979 to 1990. He was an adviser to one of its founders Margaret Thatcher. He was also a novelist.
- His wife is an artist. Sheis the daughter of Lord and Lady Gladwyn.
- Member of the Labour Party until 1974, member of the Conservative Party from 1981 to 1998 and then joined the Liberal Democrats in 1998 then later sat as a Crossbencher.
- Was then chairman of the neoliberal Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991.
- From 1954 to 1957 Hugh Thomas worked in the Foreign Office partly as secretary of the British Delegation to the sub-committee of the UN Disarmament Commission.
- Favoured European integration.
- In 1990 he was one of the leading historians behind the setting up of the History Curriculum Association. The Association advocated a more knowledge-based history curriculum in [UK] schools. It expressed "profound disquiet" at the way history was being taught in the classroom and observed that the integrity of history was threatened.
- In 1985, he signed a petition against the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua in support of the Contras, an anti-Sandinista paramilitary group.
- Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award (1962), the Nonino Prize (2009), the Boccaccio Prize (2009), the Gabarrón Prize (2008) and the Calvo Serer Prize (2009). The French Government appointed him Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2008. Also receiving the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic from Spain, as well as the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the Joaquín Romero Murube Prize in Seville (2013) and the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise (2014).
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