Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography - Softcover

Sisman, Adam

 
9780753828618: Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography

Synopsis

Hugh Trevor-Roper's life is a rich subject for a biography - with elements of Greek tragedy, comedy and moments of high farce. Clever, witty and sophisticated, Trevor-Roper was the most brilliant historian of his generation. Until his downfall, he seemed to have everything: wealth and connections, a chair at Oxford, a beautiful country house, an aristocratic wife, and, eventually, a title of his own. Eloquent and versatile, fearless and formidable, he moved easily between Oxford and London, between the dreaming spires of scholarship and the jostling corridors of power. He developed a lucid prose style which he used to deadly effect. He was notorious for his acerbic attacks on other historians, but ultimately tainted his own reputation with a catastrophic error when he authenticated the forged 'Hitler Diaries'.


Adam Sisman sheds new light on this fascinating and dramatic episode, but also shows that there was much more to Hugh Trevor-Roper's career than the fiasco of the Hitler Diaries hoax that became his epitaph. From wartime code-breaking to grilling Nazis while the trail was still fresh in 1945 (and finding Hitler's will buried inside a bottle), to his wide-ranging interests, his snobbery and his malice, his formidable post-war feuds with Evelyn Waugh, Tawney, Toynbee, Taylor and many others, and his secret and passionate affair with an older, married woman. A study in both success and failure, Adam Sisman's biography is a revealing and personal story of a remarkable life.

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About the Author

Adam Sisman is an award-winning writer, author of BOSWELL'S PRESUMPTUOUS TASK, shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and of biographies of John le Carré and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He lives in Bristol.

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780297852148: Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0297852140 ISBN 13:  9780297852148
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010
Hardcover