Richard Davenporthines

Eric the Red

The bestselling historian believed that Stalin’s purges might have been justified had the Soviet Union become a successful socialist model

(Bridgeman Images) 
issue 02 February 2019

Sir Richard Evans, retired regius professor of history at Cambridge, has always been a hefty historian. The densely compacted facts in his books, the evidence of an inexorable mind incessantly at work, the knock-out blows that he has dealt to adversaries from David Irving upwards — they all characterise authoritative books by a hard-man among scholars.

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