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Trevor-Roper, Hugh

Hermit of Peking, [45] 84; The Last Days of Hitler, [61] 53

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20190301163701 Hilary Paynter, In-Exile, wood engraving based on the Hoffmann Garden of the Jewish Museum, Berlin (detail) - Adam Sisman, Hugh Trevor-Roper

The Hunt for Hitler

Adam Sisman on Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hilter

I cannot now remember when I first read Hugh Trevor-Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler (1947). My memory is confused by the fact that I knew the author in old age and was to become his biographer; Trevor-Roper himself told me about the extraordinary circumstances in which he had come to write the book. In September 1945 he had been awaiting discharge from the army so that he could resume his pre-war role as an Oxford don, when he was asked to undertake an urgent investigation into the fate of the Führer.
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A Battleship Salesman

Charles Elliott on Hugh Trevor-Roper, Hermit of Peking

Hugh Trevor-Roper was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford when in 1973 he received a letter from a Swiss doctor named Reinhard Hoeppli. Hoeppli had a strange request. He was in possession of a manuscript of memoirs written by an English scholar he had known in Peking. The author, Edmund Backhouse, had died in 1944; Hoeppli, presumably acting on Backhouse’s wish, wanted the manuscript to be deposited in the Bodleian and perhaps published. After all, the scholar had once donated a number of rare Chinese books to the library. Would Trevor-Roper examine the text and see to its fate in Oxford?

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