Hugh trevor roper biography
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His writing had by this time taken a“literary” turn, and Sisman rightly says this might explain T-R’s diffidence vis-à-vis “big books” and research projects.
Sisman says about Trevor-Roper: “Clarity was not enough; bare prose was like an undecorated house … Hugh aspired to a sophisticated style, adorned with metaphor and irony.” (p. Permission to view the papers must be sought from Lord Dacre’s Literary Executor Blair Worden, who can be reached at [email protected].
Trevor-Roper later claimed that his boss, Kim Philby, undermined attempts by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris to negotiate with the British government.
From 1946 to 1957 Trevor-Roper taught history at Christ Church and quickly established a reputation as a controversialist - one who believes that ideas can prompt social change - with right of center views who had little sympathy for leftist scholars who took a more determinist view of history.
Sisman does not make this mistake.
Sisman frankly lays out the material circumstances, right down to the money to be got from teaching versus publication versus broadcasting, the consequences of T-R’s marriage in 1953, and the advantages and disadvantages of travelling frequently, as T-R did for fun and profit. By the time he graduated he was good in German, French, Italian and a half-dozen other useful tongues.
T-R became a research fellow at Merton College, thinking he might take a DPhil.
He authenticated about 60 volumes said to be Hitler's diaries. This sounds like amateur psychologizing, but Sisman makes it sound at least possibly true.
Trevor-Roper (1914–2003) was sent to preparatory boarding schools, one in nearby Scotland, and thence to Charterhouse (1927–1932). A collection of essays which Trevor-Roper had planned to follow the three volumes of collected essays that he published in the later part of his life: Renaissance Essays; Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans; From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution.
The archivist is Judith Curthoys, who can be reached at [email protected].
Myth and History, edited by Jeremy J. Cater (Yale university Press, 2008; paperback 2009).
Since 2012 the Trust has been financing a Postgraduate Scholarship at Oxford in association with Somerville College. He was the elder son of Bertie William Edward Trevor-Roper, a physician, and Kathleen Elizabeth Davidson. One important outcome of Thatcherism has been the appearance, especially in the 1990s, of research assessment exercises and performance indicators in the UK.
It would be interesting to know how T-R might have liked university teachers and students compensated and rewarded. The Biography. Was it all just “academic?”
Finally, and perhaps most of all, one would like to know how T-R came to be so fabulously well informed about history and literature. If the letters were little more than academic gossip, it was of the highest order — and also fabulously well written.
That book showed how T-R’s life was tied to a galaxy of “influential persons,” and made surprising disclosures about university politics (not just in Oxford). London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010; 648 pp; ISBN: 978-0-29785-214-8, cloth £25.
By William Bruneau
Hugh Trevor-Roper was the writer of Letters from Oxford (Richard Davenport-Hines, ed., 2006).
He developed a lucid prose style that he used to scathing effect, earning notoriety for his sharp attacks on other historians.
The debate with two other prominent British historians was repeated on a wider canvas in the 1950s and 1960s in a magazine called Past and Present.
Personality
Trevor-Roper commanded respect for his erudition and for the wide range of his topical expertise, but he was also contentious, controversial, and, according to some, his own worst enemy.
Connections
In 1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Howard-Johnson.
T-R was to history as Pissarro was to art.
Sent to Germany in 1945 to clarify the conditions under which the Nazis ended the war, T-R proved his worth, giving useful advice to government, but making it quite clear he would never be a civil servant. Even as he pursued his academic cursus as student (which means “fellow” in the strange lingo of the place) of Christ Church, Oxford (1946–1957), then regius professor of modern history at Oxford (1957–1980), and finally master of Peterhouse, Cambridge (1980–1987), T-R combined a rare sense of intellectual fun with the business of a world in and out of war, recession and change.
Still, Trevor-Roper was hardly a household name in the 20th, still less in the 21st century.