Editing A. J. P. Taylor (section)

==Life==
===Early life===
Taylor was born in 1906 in [[Birkdale, Southport|Birkdale]], [[Southport]], which was then part of [[Lancashire]], only child of [[History of cotton#British cotton goods|cotton merchant]] Percy Lees Taylor and schoolmistress Constance Sumner Taylor (née Thompson).<ref name=odnb1/> In 1919 his family returned to [[Ashton-on-Ribble]], Preston, where both his parents' families had lived for several decades.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=A. J. P. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10162255 |title=A personal history |date=1983 |publisher=Hamilton |isbn=0-241-10972-8 |location=London |oclc=10162255}}</ref> His wealthy parents held [[left-wing]] views, which he inherited. Both his parents were pacifists who vocally opposed the [[World War I|First World War]], and sent their son to [[List of Friends schools|Quaker schools]] as a way of protesting against the war (his grandmother was from an old Quaker family).<ref name=":0" /> These schools included [[The Downs Malvern|The Downs School]] at [[Colwall]] and [[Bootham School]] in [[York]].<ref name=wrigley>Wrigley 2006</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Staff|publisher=Bootham Old Scholars Association (BOSA)|title=Bootham School Register|place=York, England|year=2011}}</ref><ref name=odnb1>{{cite ODNB|last = Thompson|first = A. F.|author-link = Pat Thompson|title = Taylor, Alan John Percivale|doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/39823|date = 2008}}</ref> [[Geoffrey Barraclough]], a contemporary at [[Bootham School]], remembered Taylor as "a most arresting, stimulating, vital personality, violently anti-bourgeois and anti-Christian".<ref name=burk>Burk 2002, p.41</ref> In 1924, he went to [[Oriel College, Oxford]], to study modern history. During his time as an undergraduate, in 1925 and 1926, he was the first student to hold the position of secretary of the junior common room. 

In the 1920s, Taylor's mother, Constance, was a member of the [[Communist International|Comintern]] while one of his uncles was a founder member of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]]. Constance was a [[suffragette]], [[feminism|feminist]], and advocate of [[free love]] who practised her teachings via a string of extramarital affairs, most notably with [[Henry Sara]], a communist who in many ways became Taylor's surrogate father. Taylor has mentioned in his reminiscences that his mother was domineering, but his father enjoyed exasperating her by following his own ways. Taylor had a close relationship with his father, and enjoyed his father's quirkiness. Taylor himself was recruited into the Communist Party of Great Britain by a friend of the family, the military historian [[Tom Wintringham]], while at Oriel; a member from 1924 to 1926. Taylor broke with the Party over what he considered to be its ineffective stand during the [[1926 United Kingdom general strike|1926 General Strike]]. After leaving, he was an ardent supporter of the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] for the rest of his life, remaining a member for over sixty years.<ref>{{Cite book|title=An Old Man's Diary |url=https://archive.org/details/oldmansdiary1984tayl |url-access=limited |author=Taylor, A. J. P.|year= 1984 |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/oldmansdiary1984tayl/page/101 101]|isbn=9780241112472 }}</ref> After leaving the Communist Party he visited the Soviet Union in 1925 and in 1934.

===Academic career===
Taylor graduated from Oxford in 1927 with a [[first-class honours]] degree. After working briefly as a legal clerk, he began his post-graduate work, going to [[Vienna]] to study the impact of the [[Chartism|Chartist movement]] on the [[Revolutions of 1848]]. When this topic turned out not to be feasible, he switched to studying the question of [[Unification of Italy|Italian unification]] over a two-year period. This resulted in his first book, ''The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–49'' published in 1934.<ref name=burk />

===Manchester years===
Taylor was a lecturer in history in the [[Victoria University of Manchester]] from 1930 to 1938.<ref>[http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/history/our-people/former-historians/taylor/ "Our History"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304213616/http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/history/our-people/former-historians/taylor/ |date=4 March 2016 }} [[University of Manchester]] website</ref> He initially lived with his wife in an unfurnished flat on the top floor of an eighteenth-century house called The Limes, at 148 Wilmslow Road, which was set back from the street, opposite the entrance to [[Didsbury Park]], at the southern end of Didsbury village.<ref>Burk 2002{{page needed|date=March 2020}}</ref> A few years later Taylor purchased a house in the village of [[Disley]] on the edge of the [[Peak District]].

===Oxford years===
He became a Fellow of [[Magdalen College, Oxford]], in 1938, a post he held until 1976. He was also a lecturer in modern history at the [[University of Oxford]] from 1938 to 1963. At Oxford he was such a popular speaker that he had to give his lectures at 8:30&nbsp;a.m. to avoid the room becoming over-crowded.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

In 1962, Taylor wrote in a review of ''The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849'' by [[Cecil Woodham-Smith]] that: "All Ireland was a Belsen. ... The English governing class ran true to form. They had killed two million Irish people."<ref name="Donnelly">{{cite web
 |last        = Donnelly
 |first       = James
 |title       = The Great Famine and its interpreters, old and new
 |publisher   = History Ireland
 |date        = Autumn 1993
 |url         = https://www.historyireland.com/the-famine/the-great-famine-and-its-interpreters-old-and-new/
 |access-date  = 2008-05-29
}}</ref> Taylor added that if the death rate from the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine]] was not higher it "was not for want of trying" on the part of the British government, quoting Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College: "I have always felt a certain horror of political economists since I heard one of them say that the Famine in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good."<ref name="Donnelly" /> Taylor later reprinted his book review under the stark title "Genocide" in his 1976 book ''Essays in English History''."<ref name="Donnelly" />

In 1964, whilst he retained his college fellowship, the University of Oxford declined to renew Taylor's appointment as a university lecturer in modern history. This apparently sudden decision came in the aftermath of the controversy around his book ''The Origins of the Second World War''. Moving to London, he became a lecturer at the [[Institute of Historical Research]] at [[University College London]] and at the [[University of North London|Polytechnic of North London]].<ref name="nyt">Bernstein, Richard (8 September 1990) [https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/08/obituaries/ajp-taylor-british-historian-dies.html "A.J.P. Taylor, British Historian, Dies"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170809042522/http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/08/obituaries/ajp-taylor-british-historian-dies.html |date=9 August 2017 }} in ''[[The New York Times]]''</ref>

An important step in Taylor's "rehabilitation" was a ''[[festschrift]]'' organised in his honour by [[Martin Gilbert]] in 1965. He was honoured with two more ''festschriften'', in 1976 and 1986. The ''festschriften'' were testaments to his popularity with his former students as receiving even a single ''festschrift'' is considered to be an extraordinary and rare honour.

===Second World War===
During the [[World War II|Second World War]], Taylor served in the [[Home Guard (United Kingdom)|Home Guard]] and befriended émigré statesmen from [[Central Europe]], such as the former Hungarian President Count [[Mihály Károlyi]] and [[Czechoslovakia|Czechoslovak]] President [[Edvard Beneš]]. These friendships helped to enhance his understanding of the region. His friendship with Beneš and Károlyi may help explain his sympathetic portrayal of them, in particular Károlyi, whom Taylor portrayed as a saintly figure. Taylor became friends with [[Hubert Ripka]], the press attache for Beneš, who lived in Oxford, and through him, got to know President Beneš who lived in London.<ref>{{Cite book|first= Kathleen |last=Burk|publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven and London |title= Troublemaker The Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor|date=2000| pages=236}}</ref> Taylor wrote that because Beneš was a President, "he was not allowed to brave the front line in London and had to live in a sovereign state at [[Aston Abbotts]] – a Rothschild house of, for them, a modest standard. Bored and isolated, Beneš summoned an audience whatever he could and I was often swept over to Aston Abbots in the presidential car".{{Sfn|Burk|2000|p=236}}

In 1943, Taylor wrote his first pamphlet, ''Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe'', explaining his view that Czechoslovakia would after the war serve as a "bridge" between the Western world and the Soviet Union.{{Sfn|Burk|2000|p=236}} ''Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe'' began as a lecture Taylor had given at the Czechoslovak Institute in London on 29 April 1943 and at the suggestion of [[Jan Masaryk]] was turned into a pamphlet to explain Czechoslovakia's situation to the British people.{{Sfn|Burk|2000|p=236}} Taylor argued that the Czechoslovaks would have to "explain" democracy to the Soviets and "explain" socialism to the British, saying: "You must appear to the English people as communists and to the Russians as democrats and therefore receive nothing, but abuse from both sides{{Sfn|Burk|2000|p=236}} ''Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe'' reflected Beneš's theory of "convergence" as he felt based on what he was seeing in wartime Britain that the western nations would become socialist after the war while the Soviet Union would become more democratic. In 1945, Taylor wrote: "Beck, Stojadinović, Antonescu and Bonnet despised [Beneš's] integrity and prided themselves on their cunning; but their countries, too, fell before the German aggressor and every step they took has made the resurrection of their countries more difficult. [In contrast] the foreign policy of Dr. Beneš during the present war has won for Czechoslovakia a secure future."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lukes|first=Igor|author-link = Igor Lukes|title=Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler: The Diplomacy of Edvard Benes in the 1930s|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1996|pages=159}}</ref> During the same period, Taylor was employed by the [[Political Warfare Executive]] as an expert on Central Europe and frequently spoke on the radio and at various public meetings. During the war, he lobbied for British recognition of [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s [[Yugoslav Partisans|Partisans]] as the legitimate government of [[Yugoslavia]].

===Resignation from British Academy===
In 1979, Taylor resigned in protest from the [[British Academy]] over its dismissal of [[Anthony Blunt]], who had been exposed as a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] spy. Taylor took the position that:<ref name=nyt />

{{bquote|It's none of our business, as a group of scholars, to consider matters of this sort. The academy's only concern should be his scholarly credentials, which are unaffected by all this.}}

===Personal life===
Taylor married three times. He married his first wife Margaret Adams in 1931, they had four children together and divorced in 1951. For some time in the 1930s, he and his wife shared a house with the writer [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] and his wife [[Kitty Muggeridge|Kitty]]. From the 1940s Margaret's infatuations with [[Robert Kee]] and [[Dylan Thomas]] pushed the couple towards separation. His second wife was Eve Crosland, the sister of [[Anthony Crosland]] [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]], whom Taylor married in 1951; they had two children and divorced in 1974. His third wife was the Hungarian historian Éva Haraszti. They married in 1976.<ref>Taylor, A. J. P. (1983) ''A Personal History''. London: Hamish Hamilton. p.267</ref>