Hugh Trevor-Roper Add a review

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton, (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford.

Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. According to John Philipps Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books". Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman wrote that "The bulk of his publications is formidable ... Some of his essays are of Victorian length. All of them reduce large subjects to their essence. Many of them ... have lastingly transformed their fields." Conversely, Sisman wrote: "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed."

In 1945, British intelligence tasked Trevor-Roper with ascertaining the facts about Adolf Hitler's death. From interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents, he concluded in The Last Days of Hitler (1947) that Hitler was dead and had not escaped Berlin.

In 1983, Trevor-Roper's reputation was "severely damaged" when he authenticated the Hitler Diaries shortly before they were shown to be forgeries.