A.J.P. Taylor and History as a Lie Not Agreed Upon

Alan John Percivale Taylor—universally known as A.J.P. Taylor—was born in Southport, Lancashire, in 1906, and died in London in 1990. From the 1950s until his death, he was unquestionably the most famous historian in Britain, known to scholars for his thirty books and often controversial views, and also known to the general public for his frequent appearances on television at a time when Britain had only one or two channels, and long before other historians featured on television from the 1970s onward. After his death, Taylor was the subject of three full-length biographies, more than some British prime ministers have received. In his lifetime he was the recipient of three festschrifts, and the subject of countless reviews in newspapers and journals.

Like almost all historians, I greatly admired Taylor’s historical gifts, his originality, and his clipped, ironical writing style. Recently, I began to reread works by and about him, and the more I read, the more appalling he…