Dr Todd Gray

Dr Todd Gray MBE was born in New England and has lived in Britain since undertaking his undergraduate studies in London. He has become Devon’s best-known historian partly through his research being frequently highlighted by local, regional and national media. Gray has written questions for Mastermind and contributed quilling to the Oxford English Dictionary. He has published more widely on Devon than any other historian. Some publications have resulted from collaboration with, or having been commissioned by, Devon County Council, Exeter City Council, English Heritage, Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon and the Pilgrim Trust as well as societies including the Devonshire Association, Devon Garden Trust and the Devon & Cornwall Record Society. His work is distinguished by the use of original sources and by it being rooted in place. Gray has introduced some particularly challenging topics to the study of Devon including looting in the 1940s, child abuse in 1624, the rise of fascism in the 1930s, African enslavement and slave-owning, the British Empire and the waterwog, Exeter’s version of the golliwog. He was awarded an MBE in 2014 and was granted the Freedom of Exeter in 2018. Recent publications include Exeter's Lost Buildings, Destruction from 1800 to 1899 (2023), Voices of Empire in Exeter, 1575 - 1996 (2024, in two volumes), Waterwogs and the Contested History of the Golliwog (2025) and Devon's Home Front Diaries, 1937 to 1945 (2025), the first county study from the Mass Observation archive.