History in the House

History in the House pulls back the curtains on Christ Church, Oxford and reveals its great and lasting historical significance.

This is an exciting new historiographical study from the much-acclaimed historian Richard Davenport-Hines. It shows the evolution of historical ideas, purposes and methods in a clerisy that has enjoyed conspicuous influence in England for six centuries. There was growing recognition, in Tudor England, that the study of history especially improved the minds, enlarged the imaginations and broadened the vicarious experience of princes, noblemen and administrators. History showed, by precept and example, good government and bad, virtue and vice in rulers, and the reasons for the success or failure of states.

History in the House looks at the temperaments, ideas, imagination, prejudices, intentions and influence of a select and self-regulated group of men who taught modern history at Christ Church: Frederick York Powell, Arthur Hassall, Keith Feiling, J. C. Masterman, Roy Harrod, Patrick Gordon Walker, and Hugh Trevor-Roper (a Victorian radical, a staunch legitimist of the protestant settlement, a conservative, a Whig, a Keynesian, a socialist, and a contrarian).

Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR HISTORY IN THE HOUSE:

'In his highly informed new study, Richard Davenport-Hines illuminatingly explores the links between privilege and patronage with wit and authority, bringing contradictory characters such as the historians Hugh Trevor-Roper and Arthur Hassall to life in fascinating detail'

Observer

'Among the great qualities of his marvellous book is that it manages, with infinite subtlety and tremendous charity, to capture both the grandiosity and the melancholy of the place… The book opens with a pitch-perfect historical introduction. This is followed by a collection of biographical essays about eight of the men (and they were, until recently, all men) who taught modern history at Christ Church. By almost any measure, they were an impressive lot….History in the House…is replete with reflections on lives devoted to the study of the past. The whole book, indeed, is in part a meditation on the nature of history: how it should be taught and why it should be studied'

Literary Review

PRAISE FOR ENEMIES WITHIN:

‘Richard Davenport-Hines, in his fascinating and compendious new book … challenges prevailing interpretations and provides answers to all the major questions about spies… As a result, this book manages to be both nostalgic and politically progressive when it seeks to remind us, passionately and eloquently, of the value of trust’

Guardian

‘Davenport-Hines writes persuasively … Enemies Within provides a comprehensive demolition of many widely accepted myths surrounding communist subterfuge during the Cold War … it is encouraging to come across such an erudite and unapologetically ‘elitist’ counterblast’

Spectator