The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–1849, (1934)
The Habsburg Monarchy 1809–1918, (1941)
The Course of German History, (1945)
Europe: Grandeur and Decline, (1967.)
One of his students (Keith Kyle, at Magdalen, 1947) is quoted in A.J.P.Taylor: Radical Historian of Europe (C.J. Wrigley, 2006) about reading a research paper in Taylor's presence.
While I read he seemed entirely preoccupied with two pursuits: with one hand stroking a large white cat that sat contentedly on his lap, and, with the other, worrying with the stem of his pipe the prominent wart at the dead-center of his ample forehead.
But A. J. P. Taylor was not just a cat lover, he was among a smaller elite who disliked Dylan Thomas. One critic writes:
The Oxford historian A. J. P. Taylor—no stickler for convention himself—detested Thomas for his laziness, dishonesty, drunkenness, and parasitism; it was Taylor’s wife, Margaret, in love with Thomas, who gave him the money to live in his last and beautiful home, the Boat House, in Laugharne, on the Carmarthenshire coast. Yet Thomas was far from grateful for his patron’s largesse (she paid all his bills, too); in private, he was disparaging about, and even contemptuous of, her. He regarded her cold-bloodedly as a cash cow, and, come what might, he always had money for the pub.
While I read he seemed entirely preoccupied with two pursuits: with one hand stroking a large white cat that sat contentedly on his lap, and, with the other, worrying with the stem of his pipe the prominent wart at the dead-center of his ample forehead.
But A. J. P. Taylor was not just a cat lover, he was among a smaller elite who disliked Dylan Thomas. One critic writes:
The Oxford historian A. J. P. Taylor—no stickler for convention himself—detested Thomas for his laziness, dishonesty, drunkenness, and parasitism; it was Taylor’s wife, Margaret, in love with Thomas, who gave him the money to live in his last and beautiful home, the Boat House, in Laugharne, on the Carmarthenshire coast. Yet Thomas was far from grateful for his patron’s largesse (she paid all his bills, too); in private, he was disparaging about, and even contemptuous of, her. He regarded her cold-bloodedly as a cash cow, and, come what might, he always had money for the pub.
A. J. P. Taylor was a popular figure beyond academe, and that speaks to a now less common respect for intellectual accomplishment.
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