Important bibliography of English Judaica by Cecil Roth (Bezalel; 1899–1970), Jewish historian; editor in chief of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Roth, who was born in London, saw active service in the British infantry in 1918 before entering Merton College, Oxford, obtaining his doctorate in 1925. He was trained as a general historian, with a special interest in Italy, his first major work being The Last Florentine Republic (1925). A traditional, observant Jew who learned Hebrew from his father and under Jacob Mann, he was from the first interested in Judaica: as an undergraduate in 1920, he produced a paper identifying the convert Duarte Brandao with the military adventurer Sir Edward Brampton. In that same year, under the influence of Herbert Loewe, Roth also translated a number of the Kinot (liturgical poems for the Ninth of Av), foreshadowing a continuing interest in Jewish liturgy, especially of the more recondite rites. He subsequently devoted himself to Jewish subjects, first as free-lance writer and lecturer, and from 1939 to 1964 as reader in Jewish Studies at Oxford.