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A. J. P. Taylor: a nonconforming radical historian of Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
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Alan Taylor was something of a transitional figure among British historians. He began with more than a touch of the old-style gentleman scholar about him but went on to become an early example of the media personality, in some ways a second-half-of-the-twentieth-century variant of this. Yet he was a substantial scholar who could draw large academic audiences as well as someone who could present history to a big national audience. He wrote on traditional topics in a traditional manner, but he took narrative history to new heights.
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References
1 For his family background see Taylor, A. J. P., A Personal History (thereafter Taylor, Personal History) (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983)Google Scholar; Sisman, A., A. J. P. Taylor (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994)Google Scholar; Wrigley, C. J., ‘Introduction’ to A. J. P. Taylor: A Complete Bibliography (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Ibid., ‘Alan John Percivale Taylor 1906–1990’, Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 82 (1993), 493–524.
2 Observer, 29 July 1979, 16 May 1965.
3 Manchester Guardian, 4 Dec. 1936.
4 ‘Accident Prone’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 49, no. 1 (1977), 7.Google Scholar
5 Observer, 21 March 1971. Times Literary Supplement (thereafter TLS), 15 April 1973; Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 153.Google Scholar
6 Taylor to Sir George Clark, 14 June 1964, Sir G. N. Clark Papers, the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
7 Taylor to Clark, 16 May 1961, Clark Papers.
8 Taylor to Clark, 5 March 1964, Clark Papers. He defended his use of ‘England’ not ‘Britain’ in his Oxford History in the Journal of Modern History, Vol. 47, no. 4 (1975), 622–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and repeated the use of ‘English’ in one of the Penguin collections of his essays (see n. 24).
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10 Taylor to George Barnes, 17 May 1947, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham.
11 Radio Times, Vol. 154, issue 1995, 1 Feb. 1962, 4.
12 Taylor, Personal History, 207.
13 Taylor to C. H. Roberts, 26 Sept. 1965, Oxford University Press Archives.
14 ‘Diplomatic History’, a book review, Manchester Guardian, 23 May 1939.
15 ‘The Rise and Fall of “Pure” Diplomatic History’, in the ‘Historical Supplement’ to the TLS, 6 Jan. 1956. Repr. most recently in Taylor, A. J. P., From Boer War To Cold War: Essays in Twentieth Century European History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994).Google Scholar
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18 This was very apparent in what was available for the selection of his essays, From Napoleon to the Second International: Essays in Nineteenth-century European History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993).Google Scholar
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21 ‘The Secrets of Diplomacy’, TLS, 12 April 1947. He withdrew the vindication comment in the TLS, 3 May 1947.
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27 For reassessments of The Origins of the Second World War (1961), see, alia, inter, Mason, T., ‘Some Origins of the Second World War’, Past and Present, Vol. 29 (1964), 67–87Google Scholar; Robertson, E. M., ed., The Origins of the Second World War: Historical Interpretations (London: Macmillan, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Louis, W. R., ed., The Origins of the Second World War: A. J. P. Taylor and his Critics (New York: Wiley, 1972)Google Scholar; Martel, G., ed., The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: The A. J. P. Taylor Debate after Twenty-five Years (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986)Google Scholar; Boyce, R. and Robertson, , eds., Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bosworth, R. J. B., Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War 1945–1990 (London: Routledge, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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33 For example, see ‘Accident Prone’, 7. When Alan Taylor helped me prepare the bibliography of his writings, the only time he tried to influence my views was on Namier (with one minor success, Complete Bibliography, 59).
34 For critical comments by him of Namier's work before their personal rift, see ‘The Namier View of History’, TLS, 28 Aug. 1953, supplement ‘Thoughts and Second Thoughts upon some Outstanding Books of the Half Century 1900–1950’, pp. xxii–xxiii.
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37 These comments are not intended to suggest that there was nothing more to the friendship.
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39 Taylor, Personal History, 244.
40 Taylor to Clark, 18 Dec. 1967, Clark Papers.
41 A comment (and variants on it) frequently made by him. For example, Personal History, 235.
42 For a discussion of several of the earlier essays, see Fischer, David Hackett, Historians' Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 34–5 and 73–81.Google Scholar
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47 ‘Accident Prone’, 17; Taylor, , Letters To Eva 1969–83 (London: Century, 1991), 19.Google Scholar ‘The Namier View’, xxiii.