Hugh Trevor-Roper, the man who hated uniformity

The arrival of a letter from Hugh Trevor-Roper initiated a whole series of pleasures. Pleasure began with the very look of the envelope, addressed in his wonderfully clear, elegant hand (writing to Alasdair Palmer in 1986, he advised ‘No, don’t type your letters . . . reject the impersonality of the machine’; and towards the end of his life, when his sight was failing, it was a matter of particular regret that this ‘played havoc’ with his handwriting).

But the envelope was just the prelude to the contents, which could be relied on to be stylish, amusing, witty, imaginative and playful. Now, thanks to Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman, the joint editors of this well-judged selection of his correspondence, something of the pleasure of receiving a Trevor-Roper letter can be savoured by those who never knew him.

Only 100 letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper, then: but the editors have chosen well, and their florilegium displays the man across the length of his adult life (the first letter is to Logan Pearsall Smith in 1943,the last to Nicholas Henderson in 2001), and in correspondence with a wide range of people: with close family, with friends of long standing, and also with a younger generation of scholars whom he befriended in old age.