A.J.P. Taylor: a saturnine star who had intellectuals rolling in the aisles

AJ.P. Taylor was born a hundred years ago this month. I owe a lot to him because he was responsible for my getting an open exhibition to Magdalen, my favourite Oxford college, which I had picked out as mine when a boy of ten. Later he tutored me in modern history. You arrived at his house, Holywell Ford, in the grounds of the college, on the dot of the hour, never a second before or after, and the typing within stopped and a growly voice said ‘Enter!’ Then you got a full, crowded hour, and left again on the dot. The typing (of a Sunday Express diatribe, probably) resumed before you had closed the door. You got your money’s worth. I once heard him say, ‘I always give good value’ — whether for books, articles, tutorials, lectures or TV programmes. He came from Southport, where his father bought a ‘marine villa’ after successful operations as a cotton broker, and Taylor, despite his left-wing views, prided himself on being an honest tradesman, ‘never knowingly undersold’.