A. J. P. Taylor

Lore & Background

Taylor was born in 1906 in Birkdale, Southport, Lancashire, the only child of cotton merchant Percy Lees Taylor and schoolmistress Constance Sumner Taylor. His wealthy parents held left-wing views, which he inherited, and both were pacifists who vocally opposed the First World War. They sent him to Quaker schools, including The Downs School at Colwall and Bootham School in York. A contemporary at Bootham, Geoffrey Barraclough, remembered Taylor as 'a most arresting, stimulating, vital personality, violently anti-bourgeois and anti-Christian'. In 1924, he went to Oriel College, Oxford, to study modern history, and was the first student to hold the position of secretary of the junior common room.

Taylor was recruited into the Communist Party of Great Britain while at Oriel, but broke with the party over its stand during the 1926 General Strike. He remained an ardent supporter of the Labour Party for the rest of his life. He graduated from Oxford in 1927 with a first-class honours degree, then studied in Vienna and later published his first book, The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–49, in 1934. He was a lecturer at the Victoria University of Manchester from 1930 to 1938, then became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1938, a post he held until 1976. During the Second World War, he served in the Home Guard and befriended émigré statesmen from Central Europe, including former Hungarian President Count Mihály Károlyi and Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš.

In 1964, the University of Oxford declined to renew Taylor's appointment as a university lecturer in modern history, following controversy around his book The Origins of the Second World War. He moved to London, becoming a lecturer at the Institute of Historical Research at University College London and at the Polytechnic of North London. In 1979, he resigned from the British Academy in protest over its dismissal of Anthony Blunt, arguing that the academy's only concern should be scholarly credentials.

Reader's Guide

Taylor's significance lies in his ability to bridge academic history and popular audiences, particularly through his television lectures, which made him a household name in Britain. His work on European diplomacy, especially his revisionist views on the origins of the Second World War, sparked considerable debate and controversy. The historian Richard Overy compared him to Thomas Babington Macaulay for his combination of academic rigour and popular appeal. In 2011, History Today named him the fourth most important historian of the previous 60 years, reflecting his lasting impact on the field. His legacy includes a generation of students influenced by his teaching and his role in making history accessible to the general public. Despite the controversy surrounding some of his interpretations, his festschrifts in 1965, 1976, and 1986 testify to his popularity among former students and colleagues.

Did You Know?

• Taylor was the first student to hold the position of secretary of the junior common room at Oriel College, Oxford.
• He was recruited into the Communist Party of Great Britain by military historian Tom Wintringham.
• During the Second World War, he lobbied for British recognition of Josip Broz Tito's Partisans as the legitimate government of Yugoslavia.
• He resigned from the British Academy in 1979 over its dismissal of Anthony Blunt, arguing that only scholarly credentials should matter.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"A revolution cannot be judged by the ordinary standards of academic morality." — A. J. P. Taylor "The object of policy is not to prove one's moral worth, but to succeed." — A. J. P. Taylor "The history of the Germans is a history of extremes. It contains everything except moderation, and in the course of a thousand years the Germans have experienced everything except normality." — A. J. P. Taylor "The failure of the "good Germans," not the ranting of the "bad" ones, was the real crime of Germany against European civilization." — A. J. P. Taylor