Hugh Trevor-Roper and the stain of not being a 'gentleman'

Hugh Trevor-Roper’s reputation as historian and man of letters is now firmly established. Thanks to Adam Sisman’s 2010 biography and to the energy of Blair Worden, Richard Davenport-Hines and other scholars who have published posthumously many of his papers, diaries and letters, we have a full and generally favourable presentation of Trevor-Roper, who was the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford from 1957 to 1980.

It may seem invidious to offer a footnote, but I think it appropriate because of a remark by Trevor-Roper that I think casts an instructive light on his attitudes. In 1980, appointed in my second year of research and aged 24 to a post at Durham, I was faced with a difficulty. Now shorn of an Oxford institutional position, I would have to find a year’s fees if I were to complete my DPhil. I wrote a respectful letter to the Regius, explaining that this would amount to a third of my first year’s pre-tax salary, and asking if I might instead pay in instalments.

I was summoned to see him in his office. I found him excited about a letter he had just received from “Isaiah” [Berlin] about the brilliance of something he had just done. He handed me the letter and insisted that I read it. I did so. Trevor-Roper, or Lord Dacre as he had by then become, then turned his attention to me. “No gentleman would ever write the letter you have sent me,” he said.  He then dismissed me.

After this rebuff at Oxford, I ended up taking a doctorate at Durham as a member of staff. Both of the examiners had to be external and I was asked for a very moderate sum to help cover the expenses of one of them. I thought nothing much of Dacre’s snub.

Subsequently, I only met him once and heard of him once. In the former case, I was working in the old Public Record Office at Colindale, which I rather haunted in those days. Clearly unfamiliar with its workings, Dacre turned up, was rude to the staff in the Round Room, and found himself in difficulties. Seeing the pathetic old man, I went over and helped him out, remarking that it was good to see a major scholar in the place. He was not pleasant. In a lesser historian, his behaviour might have been dismissed as that of a pompous shit; it was certainly not that of a gentleman. 

In the latter case, my Durham colleague John Rogister told me that his Christmas meal had once been disrupted by the arrival of Dacre, who had had a domestic dispute with his wife, and had left to find the nearest free meal he could. John, the most emollient of men, found Dacre awkward. Minor points indeed, but they underline the extent to which his undoubted talents rested on a personality that may have attracted his friends, but had considerable limitations for everyone else. His failings were on the same grand scale as his achievements.