Steve Tibble Biography
Dr Steve Tibble is a graduate of Cambridge and London Universities, and is a research associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is one of the foremost academics currently working in the field of the crusades.
His latest book, 'Templars - The Knights Who Made Britain' (2023) was published by Yale University Press to wide acclaim. Other recent publications have been similarly highly praised and include 'The Crusader Armies' (Yale, 2018) and 'The Crusader Strategy' (Yale, 2020, short-listed for the Duke of Wellington's Military History Prize). He is the author of the warfare and strategy chapters in both 'The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades' and 'The Cambridge History of the Crusades' (forthcoming, 2024).
Academia is, however, something of a homecoming for Steve.
After finishing his PhD and writing a book on the political tensions within the crusader states ('Monarchy and Lordships in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1291', Clarendon Press, 1989), Steve worked extensively on strategy development in the communications industry, primarily within financial markets. He was Communications Director of one of Europe’s leading private equity companies for over a decade, but also worked on many of the UK’s largest privatisations, developed corporate communications and investor relations strategies for many FTSE100 companies, and designed communications programmes for several governments including those of Germany, Dubai, Brazil, Finland and Taiwan.
After private equity he said farewell to the financial world and took up an honorary role at the University of London (Royal Holloway). He now spends the majority of his time on academic writing, specialising in the period that stole his heart as a young student: the crusades.
Having had what is, in effect, two very different careers has meant that Steve has spent much of his time focusing on how to convey complex ideas to non-specialist audiences. This is reflected in his current work as an historian - he takes some of the more far-reaching implications of current academic research in medieval history, and synthesises them in a way which is accessible to a broader audience for the first time.
Steve still keeps one foot in the door of his communications career. He is a member of the advisory board of JPES Partners, a leading specialist financial PR firm, and is on the Advisory Board of the Humanities, Royal Holloway College, University of London.
