A.J.P. Taylor: a saturnine star who had intellectuals rolling in the aisles

AJ.P. Taylor was born a hundred years ago this month. I owe a lot to him because he was responsible for my getting an open exhibition to Magdalen, my favourite Oxford college, which I had picked out as mine when a boy of ten. Later he tutored me in modern history. You arrived at his house, Holywell Ford, in the grounds of the college, on the dot of the hour, never a second before or after, and the typing within stopped and a growly voice said ‘Enter!’ Then you got a full, crowded hour, and left again on the dot. The typing (of a Sunday Express diatribe, probably) resumed before you had closed the door. You got your money’s worth. I once heard him say, ‘I always give good value’ — whether for books, articles, tutorials, lectures or TV programmes. He came from Southport, where his father bought a ‘marine villa’ after successful operations as a cotton broker, and Taylor, despite his left-wing views, prided himself on being an honest tradesman, ‘never knowingly undersold’. He was keen on money and drove a hard bargain.

If you want to know what he looked like, go to Bruges where more or less every man over 40 looks like A.J.P. He explained his sartorial taste to me: ‘Don’t like Bohemians, so won’t wear sports jackets and flannel bags. Don’t want to be stuffy and wear dark suits. So I have them make me three-pieces in corduroy. Just right.’ He added ‘A bow tie for gaiety.’ He could be sharp. Once, while I was reading my essay, he suddenly snapped, ‘What, precisely, were the provisions of the 1909 Lloyd George budget to which you refer, so grandly and glibly?’ I failed to give a satisfactory reply (not easy) and got a tremendous rocket: ‘Never make a generalisation you can’t instantly substantiate by a concrete, detailed and accurate example.’