Dr Christopher Hull
Programme Leader for BA Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies; Senior Lecturer in Spanish & Latin American Studies
Chris researches and writes about British interactions with Latin America.
Chris arrived in the Modern Languages Department at Chester in September 2013. Before that he taught in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham from 2004 to 2013.
During this time he also taught various modules at Nottingham Trent University (2008–13), the University of Warwick (2008–09 & 2005–06), the University of Leeds (2007–08), and the University of Bristol (2009). Chris has travelled very widely in Latin America. He taught English as a foreign language in Brazil for a year in 1993, studied in Cuba and Portugal in 1997–98, and more recently has presented academic conference papers in the UK, the United States, and Cuba.
At university level he has taught core modules in Spanish language at various levels, in addition to courses in Latin American history, Cuban history, and on extended essay and dissertation student projects. He has also taught on a summer course in Pre-Sessional English for Academic Purposes, and Spanish and Latin American Area Studies courses at a residential college for ‘gifted & talented’ sixth-form students.
There are two strands to Chris’s current research. He recently published a book on Graham Greene and Our Man in Havana. It analyses the British writer’s pre- and post-revolutionary visits to Cuba, his iconic 1958 novel (and its 1959 film version), his wartime experience in MI6 and fictional portrayal of British intelligence, and attitude towards Fulgencio Batista’s U.S.-backed dictatorship and Fidel Castro’s Communist Revolution. He hopes in the future to focus on Graham Greene’s other Latin America-based novels and non-fiction books.
Chris’s doctoral research focused on the subject of Anglo-Cuban relations (1898–1964), the subject of his first published book, and he continues to be interested in diplomatic (or international) history, especially Anglo-American interactions concerning Latin America. A current research project is the 8-month long kidnapping of the British Ambassador to Uruguay Geoffrey Jackson by left-wing Tupamaros urban guerrillas in 1971. In the summer of 2017 he travelled to Montevideo and Santiago de Chile to investigate this topic, adding to primary research undertaken at the National Archives in London.
Books
Alchemy: Brian Clough & Peter Taylor at Hartlepools United (The History Press, UK: 2022).
Our Man Down in Havana: The Story Behind Graham Greene’s Cold War Spy Novel (Pegasus: New York & London, 2019).
British Diplomacy and US Hegemony in Cuba, 1898–1964 (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, UK, 2013).
Peer-reviewed articles
‘Parallel spheres: Anglo-American cooperation over Cuba, 1959–61’, Cold War History, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb. 2012), pp. 51–68.
‘“Going to War in Buses”: The Anglo-American Clash over Leyland Sales to Cuba, 1963–64’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 34, No. 5 (Nov. 2010), pp. 793–822.
‘British Diplomacy in Havana from the Second World War to the Revolution’, International Journal of Cuban Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (June 2009), pp. 54–63.
‘Our Arms in Havana: British Military Sales to Batista and Castro, 1958–59’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sept. 2007), pp. 593–616.
Online article
Cuba sufre el mayor éxodo ante su peor crisis desde el colapso de la URSS’, The Conversation (February 2023).
‘Cuba: why record numbers of people are leaving as the most severe economic crisis since the 1990s hits – a photo essay’, The Conversation (February 2023).
‘Our Graham Greene in Havana’, History Today (August 2019).
‘Cuba after Castro: royal visit to Havana reflects important shift in UK policy’, The Conversation (March 2019).
Chapters in edited books
‘The Limits of Anglo-American Cooperation in Cuba, 1945–1959’, in Rory M. Miller & Thomas C. Mills (eds.), Britain and the Growth of US Hegemony in Twentieth-Century Latin America: Competition, Cooperation and Coexistence (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 229-50.
‘“In the Edge of a Cyclone”: Bill Marchant and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, in J. Simon Rofe & Andrew Stewart (eds.), Diplomats at War: The American Experience (Republic of Letters Press: Netherlands, 2013), pp. 205–23.
‘Prophecy and Comedy in Havana: Graham Greene’s Spy Novel and Cold War Reality’, in Dermot Gilvary & Darren J.N. Middleton (eds.), Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene: Paradoxical Journeys with Saints and Sinners (New York & London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 149–65.
Book Reviews
Nov. 2020: Megan Feeney, Hollywood in Havana: US Cinema and Revolutionary Nationalism in Cuba before 1959 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), in New West Indian Guide (KITLV Press), Vol. 94, Issue 3–4, pp. 365–66.
Feb. 2015: Catherine Krull (ed.), Cuba in a Global Context: International Relations, Internationalism, and Transnationalism (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2014), in Journal of Latin American Studies (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 208–210.
2014: Bernard Diederich, Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene’s Adventures in Haiti and Central America, 1954–1963 (London: Peter Owen, 2012), in New West Indian Guide (KITLV Press), Vol. 88, Issue 3–4, pp. 405–7.
Feb. 2012: Howard Jones, The Bay of Pigs (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), in Journal of Latin American Studies (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 208–10.
Oct. 2011: Dervla Murphy, The Island that Dared: Journeys in Cuba (London: Eland, 2008); and, Richard Fleming, Walking to Guantánamo (New York: Commons, 2008), in Studies in Travel Writing (Taylor & Francis), Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 463–7.
May 2011: Julia E. Sweig, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), in Journal of Latin American Studies (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 405–7.
Feb. 2011: Juan Carlos Rodríguez, The Inevitable Battle: From the Bay of Pigs to Playa Girón(Atlanta, GA: Pathfinder Press, 2009), in Journal of Latin American Studies (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 191–3.
Oct. 2010: Leslie Bethel (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America: Vol. IX, Brazil Since 1930(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), in Bulletin of Latin American Research (Wiley-Blackwell), Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 522–3.
Jan. 2010: Thomas H. Holloway (ed.), A Companion to Latin American History (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), in Bulletin of Latin American Research (Wiley-Blackwell), Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 106–7.
- BA (Newcastle)
- MLitt (Newcastle)
- PhD (Nottingham)