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There are not many self-identified intellectuals in British public life, and those who claim the title are often marked out as troublesome eccentrics by those they offend or oppose. As a contrarian, the historian Alan John Percivale Taylor (1906-90) was non-pareil. He positioned himself both as a patriot, a “Little Englander”, and, as a leftwinger, a critic of the Establishment (a phrase that he is said to have coined). Although he cultivated politicians, he championed causes that deeply irritated them. His high profile as a popular journalist probably counted against him when, in 1957, his rightwing rival Hugh Trevor Roper was appointed Regius Professor of History at Oxford. Taylor’s reputation endures as a revisionist historian of the Second World War, a critic of postwar British foreign policy and as a gadfly on the hide of the Establishment.

One to read: The Trouble Makers (1957)

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