I first heard of Raymond Carr, who wrote for this magazine for more than 40 years, when I was in Italy in the army at the end of the second world war, and I had a letter from my sister in London saying that she had met the most marvellous man who was not only very funny but immensely clever, and I must meet him when I got back. By the time I did, Raymond had moved from being a wartime schoolmaster at Wellington College to a being a resident fellow of All Souls, Oxford. He was, yes, both immensely funny and rather grand.
Raymond Carr had been educated at Brockenhurst school, and then in 1941 won a history scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, having continued his education (as he used to put it) by teaching himself the clarinet and supporting himself by performing in a jazz band. In the 1930s he was an ardent pacifist; then, in the war, he tried to join the army but was rejected on grounds of bad health.
At All Souls he became an expert first in Swedish, then in Spanish history. In the room in which he held tutorials he also entertained a wide circle of friends, both undergraduates and academics. At weekends he would come to London, where there always seemed to be someone who liked him to stay, usually it seemed in a large house off the King’s Road. And in the evenings there would be parties in the Stork Room or the Gargoyle Club in Soho.
But Raymond never let himself be far away from his work. His first publication was on Swedish history; then he turned his attention to what seemed a wider canvas, Spain. His monumental work Spain, 1808–1939 was published in 1966 and was quickly recognised, especially in Spain itself, as one of the major works of Spanish history.
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