HISTORY IN THE HOUSE: Some Remarkable Dons

A Spectator Best Book of the Year. The historian needs a lust for life! 500 years ago, Thomas Wolsey endowed in Oxford a foundation he called Cardinal's College. Henry VIII, the monarch who dismissed and ruined him, re-established it as Christ Church later in his reign as an institution rich, spacious and imposing beyond any other. It would help young men of Tudor England and beyond to study history, improve their minds, enlarge imaginations and broaden experience for the benefit of the realm - under the tutelage, of course, of some remarkable dons. Generations of students had their intellects and world perspectives shaped by Oxford. It was believed that the study of history - touching the ancient world at one end and modern politics at the other - interlaced with geography, economics, political science, law and modern languages, would demonstrate the reasons for the success or failure of states. The student would be taught - in Sir Isaiah Berlin's memorable phrase - to 'spot the bunk!' This book examines the intimate connections between British politics, statecraft and the Oxford University history course. It explores the temperaments, ideas, imagination, prejudices, intentions and influence of a select and self-regulated group of men who taught modern history at Christ Church: Frederick York Powell, Heath, anarchist and jingo; Arthur Hassall, Keith Feiling, J. C. Masterman, doyen of the modern history corps, Roy Harrod, Patrick Gordon Walker, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Robert Blake; by turns an unruly Victorian radical, a staunch legitimist of the Protestant settlement, a Tory, a Whig, a Keynesian, a socialist, a rationalist who enjoyed mischief, and a student of realpolitik who enjoyed the busy hum of rumour and intrigue. These dons, with their challenging and sometimes contradictory opinions, explored with their pupils the wielding of power, the art of persuasion and the exercise of civil and political responsibility. Intelligent, strenuous and aware of the treachery and uncontrollability of things in the world, they studied the crimes, follies, misfortunes, incapacity, muddle and disloyalty of humankind in every generation. It also touches on the influence they have used in the significance of their arguments to public life today. A shrewd, amusing and elegant book which is a pleasure to read. 420 pages with 16 pages of colour plates, 28 illustrations in total including many portraits.