Trevor-Roper argued that history should be understood as an art, not a science, and asserted that the key attribute of the successful historian was the power of imagination.

The British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper argued that Carr's dismissal of the " might-have-beens of history " reflected a fundamental lack of interest in examining historical causation.

Other possible inspirations include Lieutenant Colonel Sir Claude Dansey, deputy head of MI6 and head of the wartime Z network, who achieved different interpretations of his character from those who knew him: Malcolm Muggeridge thought him " the only professional in MI6 ", whilst Hugh Trevor-Roper considered Dansey to be " an utter shit, corrupt, incompetent, but with a certain low cunning ".

For Trevor-Roper, history was full of contingency, and the story of the past was neither a continuous advance nor decline, but was rather resolved by accident and through the particular choices that particular individuals made in the time at question.

Though Trevor-Roper often acknowledged the impact of social trends upon history, in his view, it was the actions of the individuals that made the difference.

However, in his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively upon political history, but rather sought to examine the interaction between the political, intellectual, social and religious trends of the period.

In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and ' 60s, Trevor-Roper was increasingly influenced by — though he never formally embraced the work of — the French Annales School, especially Fernand Braudel, and did much to introduce the work of the Annales school to the English-speaking world.

Another aspect of Trevor-Roper ’ s general outlook on history and on scholarly research that has inspired controversy is his viewpoint on historical experiences of pre-literate societies.

The conflict centers around what factors must be present in order for a society to qualify as having a “ history ,” which Trevor-Roper thought required documentable evidence of if and how a society's “ movement ” toward change and development was accomplished.

Kahn was awarded a doctorate ( D. Phil ) from Oxford University in 1974, in modern German history under the supervision of the then Regius professor of modern history, Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Trevor-Roper countered this criticism by arguing that Hitler expressed an intention to go to war sooner rather than later, and it was Hitler's intentions in foreign policy in late 1937 as opposed to his precise plans at this moment in history that really mattered.

B. Priestley, and the Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper said in 1977 that More was " the first great Englishman whom we feel that we know, the most saintly of humanists, the most human of saints, the universal man of our cool northern renaissance.

As the American historian Gerhard Weinberg noted, German demands for territorial revision went beyond merely regaining land lost under the Treaty of Versailles, and instead embraced calls for the German conquest and colonization of all Eastern Europe, regardless of whether the land in question had belonged to Germany before 1918 or not Likewise, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper argued that the goal of overthrowing Versailles was only a prelude to seizing Lebensraum in Eastern Europe for Germany with no regard as to where Germany's 1914 frontiers had been.

Irving was an early proponent of the argument that the diaries were a forgery, and went so far as to crash the press conference held by Hugh Trevor-Roper at the Hamburg offices of Der Stern magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine ( Trevor-Roper had called the press conference to announce his withdrawal of his endorsement ).

Irving was proud of the " trail of chaos " he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and in particular took a great deal of pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his criticism of Irving's methods and conclusions.

Getting gay men to give evidence was of considerable difficulty for the committee: Wolfenden considered placing an advert in a newspaper or magazine, but the committee instead decided to locate three men willing to give evidence: Peter Wildeblood, Carl Winter and Patrick Trevor-Roper.

Wildeblood had been convicted and sent to prison, while Winter and Trevor-Roper were more respectable: Winter was director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and Trevor-Roper was a distinguished eye surgeon and brother of the famous historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.

In order to protect their identities, Trevor-Roper was referred to as the " Doctor " while Winter was referred to as " Mr White ".

In private, he was furious with Trevor-Roper for holding an honour that Taylor considered rightfully his.

Adding to Taylor's rancour was the fact that he had arrived at Oxford a decade before Trevor-Roper.

Beyond that, it was fashionable to portray the dispute between Taylor and Trevor-Roper as a battle between generations.

Taylor, with his populist, irreverent style, was nearly a decade older than Trevor-Roper, but was represented by the media as a symbol of the younger generation that was coming of age in the 1950s – 1960s.

Trevor-Roper, who was unabashedly old-fashioned ( he was one of the last Oxford dons to lecture wearing his professor's robes ) and inclined to behave in a manner that the media portrayed as pompous and conceited, was seen as a symbol of the older generation.

A subtle but important difference in the style between the two historians was their manner of addressing each other during their TV debates: Trevor-Roper always addressed Taylor as " Mr. Taylor " or just " Taylor ", while Taylor always addressed Trevor-Roper as " Hugh ".

In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book by John Röhl endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for World War I. Trevor-Roper wrote that, in his opinion, far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers.

During World War II, Trevor-Roper served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of the Secret Intelligence Service, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, the Abwehr.

In response to The Last Days of Hitler, Trevor-Roper received a death threat from the Stern Gang for his supposed over-emphasis on Hitler's charisma, which the authors of the death threat felt had exonerated the German people.

The first was Letters from Oxford, a collection of letters written by Trevor-Roper between 1947 – 60 to his close friend, the American art collector Bernard Berenson.

* Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson.

" Trevor-Roper, Hugh " pages 1204 – 1205 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing edited by Kelly Boyd, Volume 2 M-Z, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-884964-33-8.

*“ Discussion of H. R. Trevor-Roper: " The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century "” pages 8 – 42 from Past and Present, No. 18, November 1960 with contributions from Roland Mousnier, J. H. Elliott, Lawrence Stone, H. R. Trevor-Roper, E. H. Kossmann, E. J. Hobsbawm and J. H. Hexter.

However, even before publication, Clark's work was coming under attack from supporters of Haig, including his son and historians John Terraine, Robert Blake and Hugh Trevor-Roper, former tutor to Clark, who was married to Haig's daughter.

He consulted eye specialist Patrick Trevor-Roper, who diagnosed a latent squint and recommended that Chatwin take a six-month break from his work at Sotheby's.

2006 saw the publication of the noted British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper's letters to Berenson in the period 1947-1960, in a book entitled Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines, published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

* Trevor-Roper, Hugh " A. J. P. Taylor, Hitler and the War " pages 86 – 96 from Encounter, Volume 17, July 1961.

This attack continued from a position he had earlier assumed, in his response in the late 1950s to a debate between Lawrence Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper.

The large-format Great Civilizations series, published from 1961, featured contributions by such esteemed academics as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A. J. P.

For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were those of intellectual vitality, religious quarrels and of divergence between Protestant and Catholic states, the latter being outpaced by the former economically, politically and constitutionally.

The “ general crisis ” thesis generated much controversy between those, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who believed in the thesis, but saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being more social and economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow.

Hugh Trevor-Roper said about them: " It is thanks to Camden that we ascribe to Queen Elizabeth a consistent policy of via media rather than an inconsequent series of unresolved conflicts and paralysed indecisions.

The Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan awarded the chair to the Tory Trevor-Roper rather than the Labourite Taylor.

At times, the discussion became quite heated ; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: " The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis.