Volume 4, Number 7 · May 6, 1965
The History of A. J. P. Taylor
By F.H. Hinsley
Politics in Wartime and Other Essays
by A.J.P. Taylor
Atheneum, 207 pp., $5.00
Whether or not he has the stature of Gibbon and Macaulay, as enthusiastic reviewers have occasionally—and irrelevantly—claimed for him, A. J. P. Taylor is certainly among the most prominent of living British historians. It is not the universal opinion that he is among the most distinguished. On the contrary, he is also; by all odds, the most controversial among these most prominent figures. He poses a problem, indeed, which the controversy has done little as yet to resolve. While some of the criticism he incurs is concerned with the quality of his work and the soundness of his judgments—and does not arise merely from disagreement with the drift and content of his conclusions—most of it, and all the praise, confuses these two issues. His latest book, providing us with another opportunity to assess his real worth, will receive, like everything he has written, both lyrical praise and the blackest of damnation. On this account it will be another missed opportunity.
Review, 2004 words
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