Ian Bradley

​Ian Bradley read modern history at Oxford University where he graduated with a congratulatory first-class degree and went on to gain a doctorate for a thesis on the political ramifications of Evangelicalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

After a period as a research and teaching fellow at Oxford, he went into the BBC as a general trainee and then spent six years as a journalist on The Times, writing primarily about politics and education and latterly as a features and leader writer. He then worked as a schoolteacher before studying Divinity at the University of St Andrews, where he graduated with first-class honours, prior to being ordained into the ministry of the Church of Scotland.

Following a period as Head of Religious Broadcasting for BBC Scotland, he taught church history and practical theology at the universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews, where he was also Principal of St Mary’s College and honorary Church of Scotland chaplain. He combined his academic posts with pastoral and preaching work in local churches and continues regularly to take services and conduct funerals.

He is the author of 46 books which range in subject matter from academic theology and nineteenth-century history to Celtic Christianity, pilgrimage, Gilbert and Sullivan, musical theatre and the culture of spas and watering places.