Geoffrey Parker is Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History at the Ohio State University. He was born in Nottingham in 1943, and has also taught at St Andrews University, the University of Illinois and at Yale.
He has published widely on the social, political and military history of early modern Europe. His books include The Military Revolution (1988); The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road (1567-1659); Philip II (1978); The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (1995); and The Grand Strategy of Philip II) 1998 which won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society of Military History.
In 1984 Professor Parker became a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 1992 the King of Spain made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic in recognition of his work on Spanish history.