“the blood of Suez on its hands”
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A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor was an English historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his television lectures. His combination of academic rigour and popular appeal led the historian Richard Overy to describe him as "the Macaulay of our age". In a 2011 poll by History Today magazine, he was na…
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culture · English historian (1906–1990) · historian of Modern Age · university teacher · journalist · historian · also A. J. P. Taylor, Alan John Percivale Taylor, Taylor
Born 25 March 1906 · Died 7 September 1990 · Q706931
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2026· 2 entries
The Guardian: Taylor demands Albanese repeal ‘cruel tax’ in return for NDIS bill support
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1990· 1 entry
Died 1990-09-07.
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1987· 1 entry
Entered a nursing home in Barnet, London, where he died on 7 September 1990 aged 84
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1986· 1 entry
When a group of his former students, including Sir Martin Gilbert, Alan Sked, Norman Davies and Paul Kennedy, organised a public reception in his honour
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1985· 1 entry
Where the effects of Parkinson's disease on him were apparent
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1984· 1 entry
When he was run over by a car while crossing Old Compton Street in London
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1980· 1 entry
Taylor resigned from the British Academy in protest against the expulsion of the art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, which he saw as an act of McCarthyism
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1979· 1 entry
Taylor resigned in protest from the British Academy over its dismissal of Anthony Blunt, who had been exposed as a Soviet spy
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1977· 1 entry
And a non-Communist publisher reissued the book, asking Taylor to write the introduction, he strengthened some of his criticisms
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1967· 1 entry
Taylor wrote an article for the Sunday Express in which he argued that speed limits had made absolutely no positive difference to road safety and that "on the contrary, [speed limits] tend to increase the risks and dange
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1965· 1 entry
Rebounded from the controversy surrounding The Origins of the Second World War with the spectacular success of his book English History 1914–1945, his only venture into social and cultural history, where he offered a
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1964· 2 entries
Taylor wrote the introduction for The Reichstag Fire by the journalist Fritz Tobias
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Whilst he retained his college fellowship, the University of Oxford declined to renew Taylor's appointment as a university lecturer in modern history
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1963· 2 entries
Trotsky was almost a non-person in Soviet historiography, mentioned only in terms of abuse
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The British Communist Party, which held the copyright to Ten Days that Shook the World in the United Kingdom, offered Taylor the opportunity to write the introduction to a new edition
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1962· 2 entries
“All Ireland was a Belsen. ... The English governing class ran true to form. They had killed two million Irish people.”
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Taylor wrote in a review of The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849 by Cecil Woodham-Smith that: "All Ireland was a Belsen
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1961· 3 entries
And made more series for it in 1963, 1976, 1977 and 1978
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Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War) by the American historian David Hoggan
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Published his most controversial book, The Origins of the Second World War, which earned him a reputation as a revisionist
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1957· 1 entry
1957–1958 and 1961 he made a number of half-hour programmes on ITV in which he lectured without notes on a variety of topics, such as the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War
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1956· 1 entry
Taylor demonstrated against the Suez War, though not the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which he believed had saved Hungary from a return to the rule of Admiral Miklós Horthy
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1954· 1 entry
Published his masterpiece, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918, and followed it up with The Trouble Makers in 1957, a critical study of British foreign policy
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1953· 1 entry
“The Establishment draws in recruits from outside as soon as they are ready to conform to its standards and become respectable. There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment – and nothing more corrupting.”
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1952· 1 entry
In the wake of editor Philip Zec's dismissal, he began writing a weekly column the following year for the Daily Herald until 1956
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1951· 2 entries
His second wife was Eve Crosland, the sister of Anthony Crosland MP, whom Taylor married in 1951; they had two children and divorced in 1974.
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Taylor made his first move into mass-market journalism, spending just over a year as a columnist at the tabloid Sunday Pictorial, later renamed the Sunday Mirror
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1950· 1 entry
Was again temporarily banned by the BBC when he attempted to deliver a radio address against British participation in the Korean War
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1948· 1 entry
Attended and did his best to sabotage a Stalinist cultural congress in Wrocław, Poland
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1945· 2 entries
“Beck, Stojadinović, Antonescu and Bonnet despised [Beneš”
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Taylor wrote: "Beck, Stojadinović, Antonescu and Bonnet despised [Beneš's] integrity and prided themselves on their cunning; but their countries, too, fell before the German aggressor and every step they took has made th
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1944· 1 entry
Was temporarily banned from the BBC following complaints about a series of lectures he gave on air in which he gave full vent to his anti-German feelings
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1943· 3 entries
Taylor wrote his first pamphlet, Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe, explaining his view that Czechoslovakia would after the war serve as a "bridge" between the Western world and the Soviet Union
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“he was not allowed to brave the front line in London and had to live in a sovereign state at Aston Abbotts – a Rothschild house of, for them, a modest standard. Bored and isolated, Beneš summoned an audience whatever he could and I was often swept over to Aston Abbots in the presidential car”
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“s Place in a Free Europe, explaining his view that Czechoslovakia would after the war serve as a”
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1939· 2 entries
As nonsense, but many critics confused Taylor's thesis with that of Hoggan
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Was an unfortunate accident caused by mistakes on everyone's part and was not a part of Hitler's plan
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1938· 1 entry
Denounced the Munich Agreement at several rallies and may have written several leaders in the Manchester Guardian criticising it; later, he would compare the smaller number of Czechoslovak dead with the number of Poli
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1934· 1 entry
Addressed the question of Italian unification The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–49
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1931· 1 entry
Taylor worked as book reviewer for the Manchester Guardian, and from 1957 he was a columnist with the Observer
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1925· 1 entry
And 1926, he was the first student to hold the position of secretary of the junior common room
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1924· 1 entry
Went to Oriel College, Oxford, to study modern history
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1919· 1 entry
His family returned to Ashton-on-Ribble, Preston, where both his parents' families had lived for several decades
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1914· 2 entries
Though none of the statesmen of Europe wanted a world war, the need to mobilise faster than potential rivals created an inexorable movement towards war
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“delivering the Judgement of History in the highest Olympian spirit. I followed their example except the poor were always right and the rich always wrong – a judgement that happens to be correct historically. Some of the details were also a parody, as for instance the solemn discussion as when”
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1906· 2 entries
Born 1906-03-25.
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In Birkdale, Southport, which was then part of Lancashire, only child of cotton merchant Percy Lees Taylor and schoolmistress Constance Sumner Taylor (née Thompson)
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