Professor Mark White

The theme of my scholarship is leadership.  What does it take for someone to become a successful leader?  What is the relationship between character and leadership?  How important is the construction of an attractive image?  I have published ten books on this theme. Most of them focus on the modern American presidency.  A number of them examine John F.  Kennedy, including a body of work on the Cuban missile crisis.  My 1996 book The Cuban Missile Crisis, described by one reviewer as ‘this generation’s definitive account of the famous crisis,’ provided new information and interpretations, such as how JFK planned a military strike at the start of the crisis, the role played by Adlai Stevenson, and the identity of the secret sources used by Senator Kenneth Keating in claiming before the crisis that there were nuclear weapons in Cuba.  The Financial Times described my 1999 edited collection of declassified documents on the missile crisis as ‘fascinating’ and ‘absorbing.’  When the tapes of the ExComm meetings were declassified and transcribed, the leading academic journal on American foreign policy, Diplomatic History, asked me to review this material, one of the most important releases of documentation on US foreign affairs in recent decades.  In 2012 I was asked to deliver the prestigious Harry Allen Memorial Lecture, on the fiftieth anniversary of the crisis, and used the occasion to present a new interpretation of the role played by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.  I have written other works on JFK, including an edited book Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisited, with contributions by such leading Kennedy scholars as James Giglio and Fredrik Logevall, which made the case for a more balanced, nuanced assessment of Kennedy than that provided by the Camelot or revisionist schools.  In 2024 my study Icon, Libertine, Leader: The Life and Presidency of John F. Kennedy came out, with several leading presidential historians describing it as the best single-volume book yet written on JFK, and a former NATO Secretary General commenting on it: ‘Just when you think there are more than enough books on Kennedy along comes one which stops you in your tracks.’

My scholarship on JFK has been part of a broader assessment of the modern American presidency.  I have published on the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.  My 2007 book Against the President, which examined several White House advisers who disagreed with the foreign policies of the presidents for whom they worked, was shortlisted for the Neustadt Prize, awarded for the best book by a British scholar on US political history.  I have written on Bill Clinton’s election as president in 1992, his political image, and edited a book on The Presidency of Bill Clinton.  I have become very interested in the subject of image and the American presidency, and in 2020 co-edited with Professor Iwan Morgan a book on The Presidential Image.  

I have also explored the theme of leadership in the performing arts, and in 2005 published with Faber a much-praised biography of the actor/director Kenneth Branagh – based on various new sources.  This work is part of a broader interest in the history of film and theatre.

I am currently working on three book projects, two on the US presidency and one on film and theatre.

I am very active outside of the academy.  I have been interviewed numerous times for podcasts and documentaries by the BBC, Netflix, Amazon and elsewhere.  I have been invited by Parliament on numerous occasions to put on events for MPs and Lords on the modern US presidency, and to curate articles for them in House magazine.  I have published articles with several national newspapers.  I founded and I chair the London POTUS Group, which puts on talks by high-profile speakers on the American presidency.  Previous speakers have included media luminaries, UK ambassadors in Washington, as well as distinguished historians from both the US and UK.

I have a vocational commitment to teaching, and at the undergraduate level offer a range of courses, including The Kennedy Years, The American Century, and Cold War America.  I have a strong commitment to postgraduate teaching, and have supervised eight PhDs in recent years, all to completion or upgrade.  I am particularly interested in receiving applications from prospective doctoral candidates with topics on the US presidency since World War II. 

I am proud to have been, in the 1990s, the first BAME scholar appointed to Queen Mary’s School of History, and in 2008 to have become the first BAME historian awarded a Professorship at Queen Mary.