Fisher, Herbert Albert Laurens (1865–1940)

English politician and historian. He became a Liberal MP in 1916 and was President of the Board of Education. His major historical work was the three-volume History of Europe (1935).

Born in London, he was educated at Winchester, at New College, Oxford, and at Paris and Göttingen. He was a tutor and lecturer in modern history at Oxford and was vice chancellor of Sheffield University 1912–16. While president of the Board of Education, he was responsible for the 1918 Education Act, and he kept the post until the fall of Lloyd George's second coalition government in 1922. Between 1918 and 1926 he sat in the Commons as a National Liberal and from 1925 to his death he was warden of New College, Oxford. His other publications include The Medieval Empire (1898), The Political History of England (1906), and The Whig Historians (1928), which is an exposition of his philosophy of history.