Troublemaker: The Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor [Hardcover]

Ms. Kathleen Burk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0300087616 | ISBN-13: 978-0300087611

Popular, prolific, and impassioned, British historian A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) was also outspoken, controversial, and quarrelsome. Taylor’s many books, including The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, The Origins of the Second World War, and English History 1914-1945, changed the way history was written and read. His legendary television lectures, delivered live and unscripted, brought history to a huge popular audience. In this masterful biography, Kathleen Burk provides a perceptive account of the life and achievements of Britain’s most famous twentieth-century historian. Burk draws on her personal acquaintance with Taylor in his later years and on an array of previously untapped archival materials to analyze the successes, failures, and controversies of Taylor’s life as historian, Oxford don, broadcast journalist, husband, and friend.
The author sets Taylor’s professional work in the context of the development of history in England during the century, and she traces the relations between his writings and his reactions to domestic and foreign politics. Her account of Taylor’s years at Oxford explores the customs and rituals of the academic community, his colleagues, and the successive crises that beset him personally and professionally. The book also assesses Taylor’s political activities and his self-described role as an “impotent socialist,” his development as a journalist and broadcaster, previously unknown financial aspects of his freelance activities, and his private upheavals, in particular his failed marriages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Few autobiographies of academics include a chapter on the subject's freelance income, but then Taylor (1906-1990) was no ordinary historian. Burk (Britain, America, and the Sinews of War 1914-1918) shows that, in addition to his prolific writing career (The Origins of the Second World War is the most famous of his dozens of books), the renowned British historian was a talking head long before CNN hit the airwaves. Taylor's former student and a history professor at University College, London, Burk examines her subject's rather ordinary childhood and his rise up Britain's academic ladder. Taylor was a professor at Oxford when WWII launched his extra-academic career. As he made his name writing for British newspapers and appearing on the BBC, this specialist in European diplomatic history also made enemies. His unpopularity among his fellow academics was partially due to his outspoken leftist views and sometime activism in the 1950s, for instance, he was a leader in Britain's nuclear disarmament campaign. But it was also due to what the author, generally sympathetic to her subject, deems a difficult personality: "He was conceited and self-righteous, self-absorbed and self-contained, insensitive and thoughtless." Unfortunately, Burk only concedes Taylor's faults in the final chapter; until then, the reader is left wondering if jealousy and politics alone made him so controversial. Nor does Burk undertake a serious psychological examination of Taylor or an evaluation of his pioneering role as a television academic, either of which would have widened her readership. Nonetheless, this worthy book, with its balanced emphases on the professional and the personal, will please historians of every stripe. 16 pages of b&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

"This book is a remarkable portrait of a remarkable man. . . . No future historian can hope to explain [Taylor's] impact on his times better than Kathleen Burk has done."—Raymond Carr, Literary Review "Taylor's contribution to the intellectual history of this century makes this account fascinating and valuable." —Kirkus Reviews "[T]his worthy book, with its balanced emphases on the professional and the personal, will please historians of every stripe."—Publishers Weekly "This is a big book (in both senses of the term) and deserves a wide readership."—Chris Wrigley, History Today --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300087616
• ISBN-13: 978-0300087611
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #213,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best biography of the best British historian, May 25, 2001

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Troublemaker: The Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written biography of the most famous British historian of the twentieth century. It takes its place as the best book on Taylor, far better than the earlier books by Robert Cole and Adam Sisman. Kathleen Burk, similarly a prolific and professional historian, is especially good on Taylor's methods of work, and on the importance of his contributions to historical knowledge and debate. Taylor was one of the best ever diplomatic historians, yet he was also an inspirational populariser of history. He combined excellent scholarship with an unusual ability to make history accessible, through his many books, newspaper articles, book reviews, lectures at universities, speeches at meetings, and radio and TV talks and appearances. Diplomatic history is rather unfashionable today, but, as he wrote, it "deals with the greatest of themes - with the relations of States, with peace and war, with the existence and destruction of communities and civilisations." He analysed the profound and specific causes of historical events, so we can say that imperialism ensures that there will be wars, yet that each particular war occurs at a particular time for specific reasons. All his writings explored the causes, histories and outcomes of the world wars, but he also wrote about a huge variety of other themes. Unfortunately, Burk does not mention his many newspaper articles opposing the Common Market, a shared antipathy that largely explained his continuing links with Lord Beaverbrook. She concludes that his three finest books were The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918, The Origins of the Second World War, and English History 1914-1945. Other readers will have their own favourites. I would also recommend The troublemakers: dissent over British foreign policy 1792-1939, and Professor A. J. P. Taylor on Europe: the historian who predicted the future.

Burk, like Taylor, shows how the study of history is endlessly fascinating. Yet above all, Taylor was concerned to assist us all to understand how people make history.