An Honourable Englishman: The Life of Hugh Trevor-Roper
“It’s an excellent book: crisp and merciless yet funny and full of sympathy. . . .Mr. Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe.I’d read him on anyone.”—Dwight Garner,The New York Times “It’s easy to recommend this superb biography of the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914–2003) as one of the best books of the year. . . .Every page offers high-order literary entertainment. . . . Detailed, funny and beautifully paced,An Honourable Englishmanis one of the fullest and most intelligent biographies of a modern scholar ever written. Its readers are in for a treat.”—Michael Dirda,The Washington Post “A marvelous evocation of man, place and time.”—Norman Stone,The Wall Street Journal “Excellent.”—G.W. Bowersock,The New York Review of Books“An excellent biography, thorough and measured.”—Anthony Grafton,New Republic “Superb . . . lucid and engaging.”—Jacob Heilbrunn,National Interest “First-rate . . . Sisman’s narrative of this disaster proceeds in tick-tock style and with all of the suspense of a detective novel. The tale is hard to read without cringing, but impossible to put down. The book as a whole is masterful.”—Jeffrey Collins,The New Criterion “Empathetic, illuminating.”—Kirkus Reviews“Thissuperb biographyromps through the life of one of 20th-century Britain’s most notorious, controversial, and influential historian-journalists. . . . Using never-before-exploited resources, NBCC award-winner Sisman, the much-praised biographer of Trevor-Roper’s fellow historian and competitor, A.J.P. Taylor, savors, as he makes us savor, a parade of juicy stories about his subject’s life and career.”—Publishers Weekly“By milesthe best biography I have read this year.”—Max Hastings“A perfect biography.”—Robert Harris,The Sunday Times(London) “How lucky for [Hugh] Trevor-Roper, and for us, that the ideal biographer was here.It is impossible to praise Sisman’s book too highly.”—A. N. Wilson,The Observer “This is afine and serious biographywhich, on page after page, has made me laugh out loud.”—Noel Malcolm,The Sunday Telegraph “I was completely beguiled by Adam Sisman’sAn Honourable Englishman.”—D. J. Taylor,New Statesman “A veritable treasure trovefor connoisseurs of academic intrigue, duplicity, arrogance and hubris.”—Tom Devine,The Glasgow Herald “Superb . . .surpassed anything I read this year.”—James McGuire,Irish Times