A.j.p. taylor quotes

Primary Sources

(1) A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (1965)

Operation Dynamo succeeded beyond all expectations. The forces of fighter command were thrown in without reserve and tempered the weight of German bombing on the beaches. Destroyers, which brought off most of the men were aided by every sort of vessel - pleasure boats, river ferries, fishing smacks. Altogether 860 ships took part. As a further advantage, the weather was uniformly benign. On 31 May Gort, as his force shrank, handed over to General Alexander, the senior divisional commander, in accordance with orders. On 3 June the last men were moved. In all, 338,236 men were brought to England from Dunkirk, of whom 139,097 were French. Dunkirk was a great deliverance and a great disaster. Almost the entire B.E.F. was saved. It had lost virtually all its guns, tanks, and other heavy equipment. Many of the men had abandoned their rifles. Six destroyers had been sunk and nineteen damaged. The R.A.F. had lost 474 aeroplanes.

(2) A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (1965)

The

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A. J. P. Taylor

English historian of European diplomacy (1906–1990)

For the medieval historian, see A. J. Taylor.

A. J. P. Taylor
Taylor in 1977
Born	Alan John Percivale Taylor (1906-03-25)25 March 1906 Southport, England
Died	7 September 1990(1990-09-07) (aged 84) London, England
Nationality	English
Alma mater	Oriel College, Oxford
Occupation	Historian
Years active	1927–1990
Spouses	Margaret Adams ​ ​ (m. 1931; div. 1951)​ Eve Crosland ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1974)​ Éva Haraszti ​ (m. 1976)​
Awards	Fellow of the British Academy

Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his television lectures. His combination of academic rigour and popular appeal led the historian Richard Overy t

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History in Focus

Book Review

Book:	Troublemaker: the Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor Kathleen Burk Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2000; 491+xiv pages ISBN 0 300 08761 6
Reviewer:	Dr. Paul Addison University of Edinburgh

'We historians are dull creatures,' A.J.P. Taylor once wrote, 'and women sometimes notice this.' One woman who obviously thought Taylor far from dull was Kathy Burk, the last of his postgraduate students. In a departure from her more familiar role as an economic historian, she has written an excellent study of his life and work that restores him to his rightful place in the history of History.

This is the third life of Taylor. The first was his autobiography, published in 1984. Rich in anecdotes, but composed from memory, it left his readers wondering how far the tale had improved in the telling. It was the story of a Lancashire radical, born into the dissenting tradition of the industrial north, but fated to spend much of his life at loggerheads with the gentrified Establishment of Oxford, the BBC, and the civil service. Taylor'