Hugh Trevor-Roper Book order

During World War II, Britain enjoyed spectacular success in the secret war between hostile intelligence services, enabling a substantial and successful expansion of British counter-espionage. Hugh Trevor-Roper's experiences working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the war had a profound impact on him and he later observed the world of intelligence with particular sharpness. To him, the subjects of wartime espionage and the complex espionage networks that developed in the Cold War period were as worthy of profound investigation and reflection as events from the more distant past. Expressing his observations through some of his most ironic and entertaining correspondence, articles and reviews, Trevor-Roper wrote vividly about some of the greatest intelligence characters of the age - from Kim Philby and Michael Straight to the Germans Admiral Canaris and Otto John. Including some previously unpublished material, this book is a sharp, revealing and personal first-hand account of the intelligence world in World War II and the Cold War.

"These private journals, made available here for the first time, record Hugh Trevor-Roper's visit to the People's Republic of China in the autumn of 1965, shortly before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, and describe the controversial aftermath of his journey on his return to England. The visit was a catalogue of frustrations, which he relates with the verve and irony of a master narrator who relished the human comedy. His efforts to meet the real life and mind of China, in whose history and politics he had long been interested, were blocked at every turn by the resources of state propaganda and the claustrophobic attention of sullen Party guides. The visit was arranged by the London-based Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which was ostensibly committed to the impartial interchange of culture and ideas. It proved to be run by a Communist claque whose ruthless methods of control outwitted the well-connected membership. Back in England, and with help from MI5, he resolved to get to the bottom of the society's affairs. His investigations provoked a tumultuous public row which Trevor-Roper, no shirker of controversy, zestfully traces in these pages. Through the book, which closes with an account of his visit to Taiwan and South-East Asia in 1967, there runs the wisdom of historical perspective that he brought to contemporary events and his lifelong commitment to the defence of liberal values and practices against their ideological adversaries."-- Amazon.com

Jing Shan, ein Mandschu-Gelehrter aus vornehmer Familie und Verwandter der Kaiserinwitwe, wurde während des Boxeraufstands 1900 ermordet. Edmund Backhouse rettete Shans Schriftrollen, darunter ein geheimnisvolles Tagebuch, das die Ereignisse am Kaiserhof während des Aufstands detailliert beschreiben soll. Neun Jahre lang hielt Backhouse seinen Fund geheim, bis er Teile davon in China veröffentlichte. Das Buch wurde zum Klassiker und prägt bis heute unser Bild von China, basiert jedoch auf einer grandiosen Fälschung von Backhouse. Hugh Trevor-Ropers Untersuchung des Tagebuchs beleuchtet das Leben eines Gelehrten und Gentlemans, der ein Meister der Camouflage war. Trotz seines Ansehens als Wissenschaftler und Kenner Chinas, der wertvolle Handschriften und Dokumente an die Bodleian in Oxford spendete, erfand Backhouse absurde Geschichten. Er fälschte Dokumente und Empfehlungsschreiben, gab vor, Freundschaften mit berühmten Persönlichkeiten zu haben, und betrügte Unternehmen. Er hielt Minister und Kriegsherren, aber auch Familie und Freunde mit seinen Geschichten zum Narren. Ein amerikanischer Geschäftsmann bezeichnete ihn als den bemerkenswertesten Schurken in Fernost, während Backhouse selbst von einem „aufregenden Leben im Verborgenen“ sprach.

This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Hugh Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the “ancient constitution” of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented—ironically, by Englishmen—in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people’s identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualization and domestication of Scotland’s myths as local color diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling manuscript was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper’s death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity, and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers while intriguing many others. “I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it.”–Hugh Trevor-Roper

Secret conversations at Hitler's headquarters from July 1941 to November 1944 were all recorded for posterity. This book documents those conversations where Hitler talked freely of his aims, his early life, and his plans for world conquest.

The distinguished Oxford professor of modern history presents evidence that Chinese scholar and author Sir Edmund Backhouse, long thought to have lived as a virtual hermit in Peking, was in reality a forger, trickster, and eccentric.