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1906–1990 England
Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian, journalist, broadcaster and scholar. His approachably written and sometimes contentiously revisionist studies of 19th and early 20th-century subjects brought academic history to a new audience.
England Activists Historians Journalists Socialists Also known as: AJP Taylor
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From Luther to Hitler the Germans have always wanted an iron framework of discipline to keep them in reasonable order; when they lose this, they go mad, as Nietzsche did, and it was only to be expected that the Germans would follow his example rather than his teaching.
Rumours of Wars (1952)
I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?"
Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)
The details of diplomatic history do indeed seem of irredeemable triviality; but in fact, diplomatic history deals with the greatest of themes – with the relations of States, with peace and war, with the existence and destruction of communities and civilization.
Our basic conviction is that the world owes us a living... We need new and ruthless leadership. We need an economic order where the creative leaders receive greater rewards and the administrators receive less.
It is the theme which has run through European history since the French Revolution—the search for stability in an unstable world. The great revolution destroyed tradition as the basis for society; ever since men have been seeking for something to take its place.
American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)
In my opinion, statesmen are too absorbed by events to follow a preconceived plan. They take one step, and the next follows from it. The systems are created by historians, as happened with Napoleon; and the systems attributed to Hitler are really those of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Elizabeth Wiskemann, and Alan Bullock.
The Origins of the Second World War (1961)
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