Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography

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FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE SECRET LIFE OF JOHN LE CARRÉ’A fine and serious biography which, on page after page, has made me laugh out loud’ Sunday Telegraph’It is a long time since I have enjoyed a book as much as this one’ Robert Harris, Sunday Times’It is impossible to praise Sisman’s biography too highly’ A.N. Wilson, ObserverClever, witty and cruel, Hugh Trevor-Roper was one of the most gifted scholars of his generation. As a young intelligence officer, he broke one of the German codes while taking a bath during an air raid. After the war, his solo investigation into the death of Hitler made him famous in his early thirties and rich enough to buy a Bentley. Ten years later he was appointed the most senior history professor at Oxford. He married into the aristocracy and was acknowledged as one of the most brilliant intellectuals of his time. But he failed to write the ‘big book’ expected of him and tainted his reputation when in old age he erroneously authenticated the forged ‘Hitler Diaries’. The tragicomedy of his tenure as Master of Peterhouse forms a fitting finale to the story of a full and varied life.