One Hundred Letters From Hugh Trevor-Roper

by Richard Davenport-Hines (editor), Adam Sisman (Editor)

The one hundred letters brought together for this book illustrate the range of Hugh Trevor-Roper's life and as an historian, a controversialist, a public intellectual, an adept in academic intrigues, a lover of literature, a traveller, a countryman. They depict a life of rich diversity; a mind of intellectual sparkle and eager curiosity; a character that relished the comédie humaine, and the absurdities, crotchets, and vanities of hiscontemporaries. The playful irony of Trevor-Roper's correspondence places him in a literary tradition stretching back to such great letter-writers as Madame de Sévigné and Horace Walpole.Though he generally shunned emotional self-exposure in correspondence as in company, his letters to the woman who became his wife reveal the surprising intensity and the raw depths of his feelings.Trevor-Roper was one of the most gifted scholars of his generation, and one of the most famous dons of his day. While still a young man, he made his name with his bestseller The Last Days of Hitler, and became notorious for his acerbic assaults on other historians. In his prime, Trevor-Roper appeared to have a grey Bentley, a prestigious chair in Oxford, a beautiful country house, a wife with a title, and, eventually, a title of his own. But he failed to write the 'bigbook' expected of him, and tainted his reputation when in old age he erroneously authenticated the forged Hitler diaries.For an academic, Trevor-Roper's interests were extraordinarily wide, bringing him into contact with such diverse individuals as George Orwell and Margaret Thatcher, Albert Speer and Kim Philby, Katharine Hepburn and Rupert Murdoch. The tragicomedy of his tenure as Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, provided an appropriate finale to a career packed with incident.Trevor-Roper's letters to Bernard Berenson, published as Letters from Oxford in 2006, gave pleasure to a wide variety of readers. This more general selection of his correspondence has been long anticipated, and will delight anyone who values wit, erudition, and clear prose.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

484 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

AKA R.P.T. Davenport-Hines

Reviews

[Woolfhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Portrait of a thoughtful and complex intellectual. Not an easy read, best taken in small bites, but an interesting journey.

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a much better collection of letters, then HTR's letters to Berenson. These cover the time period 1945-2000, with an emphasis on 1973-1993 which has almost 50 percent. The letters have been edited (aka censored) and we get an enourmous amount of Commentary & footnotes. I'd estimate at least 200 of the 400 pages are HTR's actual writing, the rest is Davenport-Hines and Sisman. In fairness, much of the Commentary/footnotes add needed context and information.

As for the letters themselves, besides being well written, they basically confirm that HTR was an enourmous philo-semite, and devout British liberal. HTR disliked Communists AND Catholics, Joe Stalin AND Joe McCarthy, Labour AND the Tories. And in history and Literature: Hobsbawm AND Toynbee; Waugh AND Sartre. And no matter what the politics he disliked history full of jargon or pompous wind-baggery.

Hitler and the Germans were a different story. His dislike of antisemism, and love for the Jews, was consistent throughout his life. In one letter from the 1970s, he applauds a Jewish Author for going though the private letters/writings of famous Edwardians and late Victorians, and identifying all the anti-Jewish slurs and rude remarks. How shameful that was, writes HTR. And Hitler was the ultimate evil. "He's behaving just like Hitler" was HTR's most damning opinion on any foreign leader.

The Philosemitism seems to have been part of HTR's love of religious non-conformists (baptists, Quakers, etc) which in turn was a result of his dislike of Christianity. While not an atheist, HTR writes that he "dislikes 90 percent of Christians and Christianity". So, better to have lots of Jews and Christians sects and not one big Catholic or Anglican Church laying down the law.

Censorship: I've deducted one star from my review. According to the editors, they "omitted certain phrases and PARAGRAPHS from the book because of Current sensitivities" and they refused to identify where or what these deletions were because they would just "distract the reader". Well, thanks Guys for protecting me! But I'd rather make up my own mind about whether the PARAGRAPHS were "sensitive" or not. One wonders what got deleted, did HTR criticize George Soros or Tony Blair? Or maybe it was Bush or Clinton.

[James Dempsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I think nothing of Foucault, and even less of Daniel Bell. The former seems to me a typical 20th century French guru (like Sartre and Levi-Strauss). Why is it that the French, who used to be so rational and clear, have become so frothy and opaque? When did it all begin? 1870, I suppose, with the German conquest; and then Bergson. As for Bell, whose real name is, I think, much longer, I made up my mind about him at a conference in Venice a few years ago.1 He pomped away on ‘futurology’ and gave himself great airs. Because of his intellectual grandeur, he insisted on travelling first-class in the aeroplane from Venice to Milan, and sat there alone while all the rest of us had a gay party in the tourist part of the machine. I have a full (illustrated) private record of that conference: most of the illustrations are of D. Bell, in various animal forms.”

[Edward Tulasiewicz]

Brilliant. If you like letters written by Oxford University History professors!