Trevor-Roper, Hugh Redwald

▪ 2004

Baron Dacre of Glanton 

      British historian (b. Jan. 15, 1914, Glanton, Northumberland, Eng.—d. Jan. 26, 2003, Oxford, Eng.), was well known for his many and fruitful scholarly controversies, but he was catapulted into the public eye in an unfortunate way in 1983, when he authenticated some 60 volumes of diaries purported to be those of Adolf Hitler (and said to have been found by the German newsmagazine Stern) as genuine; they proved to be a forgery, and he had to issue a public apology. Trevor-Roper graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1936 and earned an M.A. from Merton College, Oxford, in 1939. During World War II he worked in intelligence. After the war the British government asked him to look into Adolf Hitler's death, and the resulting book, The Last Days of Hitler (1947), brought him a great deal of public notice. He began teaching history at Christ Church College in 1946, and he engaged in a long-running historical debate with R.H. Tawney and Lawrence Stone over the causes of the English Civil Wars (1642–51). In 1957 Trevor-Roper was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, a post he held until 1980. Considered his most remarkable collection was Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, and Other Essays (1967). In 1980 he became master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, where he was at odds with the professors until his retirement in 1987. Trevor-Roper was made a life peer in 1979.

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