Editing Hugh Trevor-Roper (section)

==Personal life==
On 4 October 1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston (9 March 1907 – 15 August 1997),<ref>{{cite web|title=Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Haig (later Alexandra Trevor-Roper, Lady Dacre) (1907–1997), Wife of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre; daughter of Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig|url=http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp17057/lady-alexandra-henrietta-louisa-haig-later-alexandra-trevor-roper-lady-dacre|publisher=National Portrait Gallery}}</ref> eldest daughter of [[Field marshal (United Kingdom)|Field Marshal]] [[Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig|The 1st Earl Haig]] by his wife, the former Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian. Lady Alexandra was a goddaughter of [[Alexandra of Denmark|Queen Alexandra]] and had previously been married to Rear-Admiral [[Clarence Johnston|Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston]], by whom she had had three children. There were no children by his marriage with her.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jan/27/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries |title = Obituary: Lord Dacre|website = [[TheGuardian.com]]|date = 27 January 2003}}</ref>

Trevor-Roper was made a [[life peer]] in 1979 on the recommendation of [[Prime Minister]] [[Margaret Thatcher]].<ref name="telegraph" /> He was raised to the [[British honours system|Peerage]] on 27 September 1979, and was introduced to the House of Lords as '''Baron Dacre of Glanton''', of [[Glanton]] in the [[County of Northumberland]].<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=47968 |date=2 October 1979 |page=12353}}</ref> He did not base his title on his surname, because "double-barrelled titles are an invention, and a monopoly, of [[Harold Wilson|Wilsonian]] peers", and "under the rules of the [[College of Arms]] either ['Lord Trevor' or 'Lord Roper'] would require him to change his surname to either 'Trevor' or 'Roper.'"

On mentioning the family's connection to the Dacre title to his wife, who liked the sound of it, Trevor-Roper was persuaded to opt for the title of "Baron Dacre", despite staunch opposition from the ''suo jure'' [[Rachel Douglas-Home, 27th Baroness Dacre|27th Baroness Dacre]] (née Brand). She had her cousin, [[Anthony Brand, 6th Viscount Hampden|the 6th Viscount Hampden]], "as titular head of the Brand family", inform Trevor-Roper that the Dacre title belonged to the Brand family "and no-one else should breach their monopoly", on the grounds of the title's antiquity of over six centuries.

This high-handed treatment strengthened Trevor-Roper's resolve in the face of his initial ambivalence. He observed "why should the Brands be so 'proud', or so jealous, of a mere title{{nbsp}}... a gewgaw, which has been bandied intermittently from family to family for six centuries, without tradition or continuity or distinction (except for murder, litigation and extravagance) or, for the last 250 years, land? They only acquired this pretty toy, in 1829, because a [[Thomas Brand (junior)|Mr Brand]], of whom nothing whatever is known, had married into the Trevor-Ropers, who had themselves acquired it by marrying into the Lennards. Now they behave as if they had owned it for six centuries and had a monopoly of it for ever. A fig for their stuffiness!". Notwithstanding objections, Trevor-Roper duly took the title of Baron Dacre of Glanton.<ref>''One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper'', ed. Richard Davenport-Hines, Adam Sisman, Oxford University Press</ref>

In his last years he had suffered from failing eyesight, which made it difficult for him to read and write. He underwent cataract surgery and obtained a magnifying machine, which allowed him to continue writing. In 2002, at the age of 88, Trevor-Roper submitted a sizable article on [[Thomas Sutton]], the founder of [[Charterhouse School]], to the ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'' in part with notes he had written decades earlier, which editor [[Brian Harrison (historian)|Brian Harrison]] praised as "the work of a master". Trevor-Roper suffered several other minor ailments related to his advanced age, but according to his stepson, "bore all his difficulties stoically and without complaint". In 2002, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died on 26 January 2003 in a [[hospice care|hospice]] in [[Oxford]], aged 89.<ref>{{cite news |url= http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/205716/h-r-trevor-roper-r-i-p/michael-knox-beran |title=H. R. Trevor-Roper, R.I.P. – Michael Knox Beran – National Review Online |first= Michael|last=Knox Beran|work=nationalreview.com |date=31 January 2003|access-date=8 November 2012}}</ref>