Alan John Percivale Taylor

Alan John Percivale Taylor (1906-1990) (better known as A J P Taylor) was one of the great British historians of the 20th century. Born in Southport[?], Merseyside, brought up in Lancashire, and educated at Bootham School[?] in York, he graduated from Oriel College, Oxford and went on to lecture in history at Manchester University before becoming a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1938, a post he held until 1976. His speciality was European history, especially the Habsburg dynasty and Bismarck. He was one of the first television historians. In 1954, he published his masterpiece, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918, and he followed it up with The Trouble Makers (1957), a critical study of British foreign policy, and the controversial The Origins of the Second World War, which earned him a reputation as a revisionist.

Taylor lived in Disley, Cheshire for a while, where Dylan Thomas was his guest; he later provided Thomas with a cottage in Oxford so he could recover from a breakdown.