Tribute to Trevor-Roper

Letters

Vol. 3 No. 21 · 19 November 1981

From A.J.P. Taylor

SIR: Oh dear. Who sent Lords Shelburne and Holland to Christ’s College, Cambridge instead of to Christ Church, Oxford? Was it you? Was it me? Or was it malign fate? At any rate it is wrong.

A.J.P. Taylor
London NW5

From Editor, ‘London Review’

It was a beautifully-executed collaborative effort.

Editor, ‘London Review’

Vol. 3 No. 22 · 3 December 1981

From Hugh Lloyd-Jones

SIR: The benign and generous notice of History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H.R. Trevor-Roper by Mr A.J.P. Taylor that appeared in your last issue (LRB, 5 November) has given me so much pleasure that I am reluctant to complain of anything that it contains. But I cannot refrain from commenting on Mr Taylor’s belief that Classical studies are concerned with a body of evidence that never increases. For more than a century a steady flow of papyri and inscriptions has added to our knowledge of ancient literature and ancient history; and there is also the evidence of archaeology. Mr Taylor imagines that Bentley, writing 250 years ago, and I were dealing with exactly the same evidence in discussing the Homeric question: in fact, the discovery of Minoan and Mycenaean civilisation by the archaeologists has made rather a big difference.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Christ Church, Oxford