Hugh Trevor Roper

Hugh TrevorRoper's life is a rich subject for a biographywith elements of Greek tragedy, comedy, and moments of high farce. Clever, witty, and sophisticated, TrevorRoper was the most brilliant historian of his generation. Until his downfall, he seemed to have everything: wealth and connections, a chair at Oxford, a beautiful country house, an aristocratic wife, and, eventually, a title of his own. Eloquent and versatile, fearless and formidable, he moved easily between Oxford and London, between the dreaming spires of scholarship and the jostling corridors of power. He developed a lucid prose style which he used to deadly effect. He was notorious for his acerbic attacks on other historians, but ultimately tainted his own reputation with a catastrophic error when he authenticated the forged "Hitler Diaries." Adam Sisman sheds new light on this fascinating and dramatic episode, but also shows that there was much more to Hugh TrevorRoper's career than the fiasco of the Hitler Diaries hoax that became his epitaph. From wartime codebreaking to grilling Nazis while the trail was still fresh in 1945 (and finding Hitler's will buried inside a bottle), to his wideranging interests, his snobbery and his malice, his formidable postwar feuds, and his secret and passionate affair with an older, married woman. A study in both success and failure, Adam Sisman's biography is a revealing and personal story of a remarkable life.