Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography by Adam Sissman
Although long regarded as one of the most brilliant historians of his generation, it is for his catastrophic authentication of the forged Hitler diaries in the early 1980′s, that Trevor-Roper is best known today.
Adam Sisman’s well researched biography sheds new light on the hoax that was to prove his epitaph, but there’s a great deal more to his story than that. An intelligence officer in WW2, Trevor-Roper was involved in code-breaking and interrogation, whilst shortly after the end of the war, his book The Last Days of Hitler was published. It remains, after sixty years, a valuable account of Hitler’s final days.
Post-war, Trevor-Roper fell into the academic world, becoming notorious for his acerbic attacks on other historians whilst his tragicomic tenure as Master of Peterhouse is the final chapter in a full and varied life. This is a comprehensive and entertaining biography, highlighting the successes and failures of a complex man.
