Hat-tip to my friend Paul Wilson for sending this link to a marvellous piece by Simon Heffer at the Telegraph. Heffer has leapt to defend his friend Andrew Roberts against a withering review in the TLS of his latest book, ‘The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War’. The review was written by Richard Evans, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge.
Heffer’s review of the review is worth noting here because it raises some interesting points about the relationship between some ‘academic’ historians and some ‘popular’ historians. I use the qualifying quotation marks here because - of course - there are many historians working in universities who have wide popular readerships, just as there are many historians on the outside who write specialist, difficult works which are not, in the literal sense of the word, popular.
I don’t intend to make any remarks about either Professor Evans or Andrew Roberts, other than to say that I enjoyed Roberts’ book immensely. I am not an expert on the history of the Second World War, whereas Evans has written exhaustively about it. Indeed, a decade or so ago he was called as an expert witness at a libel trial which hinged on his expertise in that field. But as an intelligent non-specialist reader, I found ‘The Storm of War’ to be an absorbing, lucid and gripping account of an immense subject.
What Heffer is suggesting is that Evans’ review captures the bitterness felt in a few pockets of the academic community towards historians who a) sell lots of books, b) get invited to exciting dinner parties and c) don’t have to sit through dull faculty meetings. There’s something in that, I think.
