Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton

The Lord Dacre of Glanton
Hugh Trevor-Roper in 1975
Born	Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper (1914-01-15)15 January 1914 Glanton, Northumberland, England, UK
Died	26 January 2003(2003-01-26) (aged 89) Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Nationality	British
Education	Belhaven Hill School, Charterhouse School
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Studies in 17th-century European history
Title	Regius Professor of Modern History
Term	1957–1980
Predecessor	Vivian Hunter Galbraith
Successor	Michael Howard
Spouse(s)	Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Haig Howard-Johnston
Children	three step-children
Parent(s)	Bertie William Edward Trevor-Roper (1885–1978) and Kathleen Elizabeth Davidson (died 1964)

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton, FBA (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003), was a historian of early modern Britain and Nazi Germany. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford.

Trevor-Roper was made a life peer in 1979 on the recommendation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, choosing the title Baron Dacre of Glanton. Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a wide range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. His essays established his reputation as a scholar who could succinctly define historiographical controversies. In the view of John Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books". On the other hand, his biographer, who is not an historian, writes that "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed."

Trevor-Roper's most widely read and financially rewarding book was titled the The Last Days of Hitler (1947). It emerged from his assignment as a British intelligence officer in 1945 to discover what happened in the last days of Hitler's bunker. From his interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents he demonstrated that Hitler was dead and had not escaped from Berlin. He also showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries. Trevor-Roper's reputation was damaged in 1983 when he authenticated the Hitler Diaries and they were shown shortly afterwards to be forgeries.

Trevor-Roper was born at Glanton, Northumberland, England, the son of a doctor, and the brother of Patrick Trevor-Roper (who became a leading eye surgeon and gay rights activist). Trevor-Roper was educated at Belhaven Hill School, Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read first Classics (Literae Humaniores) and then Modern History, later moving to Merton College, Oxford to become a Research Fellow. Trevor-Roper took a first-class degree in Classical Moderations in 1934 and won the Craven, the Ireland and the Hertford scholarships in Classics. Initially, he intended to make his career in the Classics, but became bored with what he regarded as the pedantic technical aspects of the classics course at Oxford, and switched to History, where he also obtained an honours first in 1936. Trevor-Roper's first book was a 1940 biography of Archbishop William Laud, in which he challenged many of the prevailing perceptions surrounding Laud.