HUGH TREVOR-ROPERHugh Trevor-Roper, who died on January 26, 2003, is remembered for throwing open the doors of stuffy academic history to reveal a bright new world.Yet having spent almost 40 years refining a mixture of popular and profound analysis, Mr Trevor-Roper thought that a 60-volume diary penned by a fraudsterwas in fact the work of the Fuhrer himself.In 1983 he declared that the Hitler diaries, for whichThe SundayTimeshad paid a fortune to serialise, were the real thing, only to retract his statement two weeks later.Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper was born on January 15, 1914 in Glanton, Northumberland, and at Christ Church College , Oxford , he initially read classics before changing to history and completing his first book “Archbishop Laud” by the outbreak of World War 2.Working in the radio security and intelligence services during the war, Trevor-Roper became an authority on the inner workings of the German war machine, and in the aftermath of Hitler’s downfall, the British Government commissioned him to investigate the Fuhrer’s death, from which he produced the book that made his name, “The Last Days of Hitler”, in 1947.His 50-year academic career spanned between medieval Christian Europe, cold war Soviet double agents, a devastating exposé of the Victorian expert on China, Sir Edmund Backhouse and pre-civil war England to name but a few of his subjects.In 1957, Mr Trevor-Roper published “Historical Essays” and became Oxford Regius professor of modern history. He continued to broaden his own horizons, offering an alternative perspective to AJP Taylor’s “The Origins of the Second World War”in 1959, writing anonymous mischievous accounts of Oxford life forThe Spectator, numerous reviews and articles for newspapers and appearing on television.In the late 60s, his output was prodigious, but then having cast his eye so authoritatively, he besmirched his standing on familiar ground when he was hoaxed with the Hitler Diaries.When in 1987 he retired from Peterhouse, Cambridge, of which he had been master since 1980, he wrote two new essay collections on the renaissance and 17th century religion, and one more followed in 1992.Mr Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston, eldest daughter of Field Marshal Haig, in 1954, and took on her three children from a previous marriage.In 1979, he was made a Conservative life peer, adopting the title Baron Dacre of Glanton.
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