Notes

• "A. J. P. Taylor (1906-90) was the best-known British historian of the twentieth century, certainly the most popular and probably the most influential. His books, particularly The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, The Origins of the Second World War, and English History 1914- 1945 changed the way history was written and read. Most of all - and unlike any other historian before or since - Taylor made history accessible, controversial and enjoyable to a mass audience. As early as 1957-8 his legendary television lectures, delivered live and unscripted, brought history to a huge popular market." "In this biography, Kathleen Burk sets Taylor’s professional work in the context of the development of history in England and traces the relationship between his writing and his response to contemporary politics. She describes his career as a professional historian at Manchester and then at Oxford, his politics, including his public stance against appeasement and in favour of rearmament in the late 1930s, and his leading role in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s. The considerable rewards of his parallel career as a freelance journalist and broadcaster, and the successive crises of his private and professional lives, are meticulously revealed."–BOOK JACKET