Table Of ContentBlair Worden is one of Britain’s pre-eminent historians of the seventeenth
century. His books include The Sound of Virtue: Politics in Philip Sidney’s
‘Arcadia’; Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of
Posterity; Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew
Marvell, Marchamont Nedham; The English Civil Wars 1640–1660; and God’s
Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell. From 1974
to 1995 he taught at Oxford University, where he has subsequently been
Visiting Professor of History and Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall. He has
also held professorships at the University of Sussex and at Royal Holloway,
University of London.
Trevor-Roper at Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1980 (© Peter Lofts)
HUGH TREVOR-ROPER
The Historian
Edited by Blair Worden
Published in 2016 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com
Copyright Introduction and Editorial Selection © 2016 Blair Worden
Copyright Individual Chapters © 2016 Rory Allan, John Banville, John Elliott,
Mark Greengrass, E.D.R. Harrison, Colin Kidd, Noel Malcolm, S.J.V. Malloch,
Richard Overy, John Robertson, Gina Thomas, Blair Worden, B.W. Young
The right of Blair Worden to be identified as the editor of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this
book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.
References to websites were correct at the time of writing.
ISBN: 978 1 78453 124 9
eISBN: 978 0 85772 791 6
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Contributors ix
The Life xiii
The Writings xv
Introduction 1
Blair Worden
Part One: Seventeenth-Century Revolutions
1 The ‘General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century’ 45
John Elliott
2 The Puritan Revolution 54
Blair Worden
3 Three Foreigners: The Philosophers of the Puritan Revolution 85
Mark Greengrass
Part Two: Ideas and their Contexts, c.1500–1800
4 Ecumenism and Erasmianism: The Wiles Lectures, 1975 101
Noel Malcolm
5 Intellectual History: ‘The Religious Origins of the
Enlightenment’ 116
John Robertson
6 The Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment 145
Colin Kidd
Part Three: Hitler and his World
7 Special Service in Germany and The Last Days of Hitler 165
E.D.R. Harrison
8 ‘The Chap with the Closest Tabs’: Trevor-Roper and the Hunt
for Hitler 192
Richard Overy
9 Himmler’s Masseur 207
Gina Thomas
vi • Hugh Trevor-Roper
Part Four: The Mind and the Style
10 Trevor-Roper and Thomas Carlyle: History and Sensibility 221
B.W. Young
11 The Classicist 240
S.J.V. Malloch
12 The Historian as Public Intellectual 255
Rory Allan
13 The Prose Stylist 268
John Banville
14 A Conversation 275
Notes 280
Index 337
Acknowledgements
Most of the contributions to this volume have drawn on material in Trevor-
Roper’s papers – the Dacre Papers – in Christ Church, Oxford. Their authors
are indebted to the archivist, Judith Curthoys, without whose boundless
helpfulness not only this book but the publication of many other writings
on or by Trevor-Roper since his death would have been barely conceivable.
I thank the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas, for allowing me to quote
material from the papers of Gerald Brenan and A.D. Peters, and the Warburg
Institute Library for permitting me to use material from the correspondence
of Dame Frances Yates. I am grateful to the following for permission to
reprint, in adjusted forms, essays first published in learned journals: Oxford
University Press for Chapter 5, which appeared in the English Historical
Review; Edinburgh University Press for Chapter 6, which appeared in the
Scottish Historical Review; and Cambridge University Press for Chapter 11,
which appeared in the Cambridge Classical Journal. Other acknowledgements
are made in the notes to individual chapters.
Contributors
Rory Allan read for a BA (Hons) and MSt in Modern History at Christ
Church, Oxford, where he is now completing his DPhil thesis on late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historiography.
John Banville’s novels include The Book of Evidence (1989), The Sea (2005),
which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize, Ancient Light (2012) and most
recently The Blue Guitar (2015). He has been awarded the Kafka Prize, the
Austrian State Prize for Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award.
Sir John Elliott was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford
University from 1990 to 1997. An early modern historian with a special
interest in the Hispanic world, his books include Imperial Spain (1963), The
Revolt of the Catalans (1963), The Count-Duke of Olivares (1986) and Empires
of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492 to 1830 (2006). His
most recent book, based on his experiences as a historian, is History in the
Making (2012).
Mark Greengrass is Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield and
Membre Associé of the Centre Roland Mousnier, Université de Paris-IV
(Sorbonne). He is author of Christendom Destroyed (1517–1648) (2014). He
co-directed the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust co-funded Hartlib Papers
Project from 1988 to 1995.
E.D.R. Harrison specialises in the study of Nazi Germany and British
Intelligence. He is the author of The Young Kim Philby (2012) and editor of
Trevor-Roper’s posthumous book The Secret World (2014).
Colin Kidd is Wardlaw Professor of Modern History at the University of St
Andrews and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His thesis on eighteenth-
century Scottish Whig historians, awarded in 1992, was the last doctorate to
be examined by Trevor-Roper. Kidd is the author of Subverting Scotland’s Past
