Volume 33, Number 1 · January 30, 1986
Virtuoso
By R.J.W. Evans
Renaissance Essays
by Hugh Trevor-Roper
University of Chicago Press, 312 pp., $22.50
In 1957 H.R. Trevor-Roper, the newly appointed and controversial Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, published a collection of short reviews and reflections that elegantly illuminated aspects of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and Europe. A decade later he offered a further collection on similar lines, only the chapters were fewer and meatier.[1] During Trevor-Roper's academic career he has produced book-length studies, brilliant and startling by turns, of medieval civilization, of a homosexual fantast in China, of the anatomy of treachery, and of the psychological world of the Nazi leadership. This virtuosity diverted and instructed the public at large, making the professor's name famous, encouraging him at times to overstretch the bow. Historians have remained lukewarm. To his professional colleagues Trevor-Roper's reputation rests above all on his essays, which treat themes from the early modern age. They will search the thirteen articles in the latest collection, most of them selected from occasional writings issued over more than two decades (although the three longest are previously unpublished), for confirmation of their judgment.
Review, 3445 words
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