Photograph of A.J.P. Taylor in his Oxford garden
In his memoir A Personal History, Taylor describes his reluctance to move to Oxford and the difficulties he and his wife Marjorie experienced making friends in a new city. However, once they moved to Holywell Ford, Taylor paints an idyllic picture of their life there, tending the garden, growing vegetables, rearing hens and ducks, raising the children and hosting undergraduates at music parties. This photo, probably from the 1950s, after the Taylors left Holywell Ford, shows a more relaxed Taylor reading in the garden.
Volume of Books Read and Films watched by A.J.P. Taylor
Taylor recorded everything he read in this notebook. He was a prolific reader, and read widely. It is rather amusing to see the name ‘Agatha Christie’ appear frequently, alongside heavy historical tomes. Taylor read many of her works, often within a couple of months of their publication. In 1949, he read Death on the Nile. One wonders if he were as conscientious a reader as his colleague, K.B McFarlane?
On the first page, dedicated to books read in 1936, we can see the name Michael Innes with a square bracket and exclamation point. Michael Innes was the name under which J.I.M. Stewart wrote his detective novels. Stewart and Taylor were friends as undergraduates at Oriel College, where Stewart would tease Taylor for his habit of reading the genre. Taylor notes the irony in his memoir: Stewart ‘laughed at my excessive reading of detective stories, little foreseeing that he would become, under the name of Michael Innes, one of the most successful detective-story writers of the age.’†
It is curious that the list includes Twenty Five Poems by Dylan Thomas (read January, 1937). Taylor’s first wife, Margaret, was one of Thomas’s patrons and, in 1935, the poet stayed with the Taylors. Taylor did not like having him around, resenting the amount of his beer Thomas consumed. In 1946, Thomas stayed with the Taylors again, when they lived at Holywell Ford (see “This Side of the Truth” – a handwritten memoir of Llewelyn Thomas below).
Taylor read other contemporary Oxford writers. We can see Betjeman appear twice on the page for 1948, Robert Kee in December 1949 and Tolkien in March 1961. He even goes as far as to record reading his own work; you can see Taylor read his book The Course of German History in July 1954.
† Taylor, A. J. P. (Alan John Percivale). A Personal History. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984. Print, p. 101.
A.J.P. Taylor’s personal copy of The Russian Revolution by E.H. Carr
Another name that appears frequently in Volumes of books read and films watched is that of Historian E.H. Carr. For Taylor, Carr ‘was the greatest historian of our age: certainly he was the one I most admired.’† Magdalen College Library has around 200 books previously belonging to Taylor in our collections, including this copy of Carr’s The Russian Revolution donated in 2008.
† Taylor, A. J. P. (Alan John Percivale). An Old Man’s Diary. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984. Print, p. 103.
“This Side of the Truth” – a handwritten memoir of Llewelyn Thomas
In this memoir of Llewelyn Thomas, son of Dylan Thomas, we hear about the poet’s second stay with the Taylors. 11 years on, the circumstances were quite different. Thomas now had a family in tow and the Taylors lived in Oxford, in Holywell Ford at Magdalen College. In the autumn of 1946, the Thomas family arrived on the Taylor’s doorstep. They were homeless, having been evicted by their London landlady. As Davies suggests, Taylor was less than enthusiastic about hosting the family. In his own memoir, Taylor wrote that he “disliked Dylan Thomas intensely.”†
† Taylor, A. J. P. (Alan John Percivale). A Personal History. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983. Print, p. 130.