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Shop nowA Man of Contradictions
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Learn moreA. L. Rowse proclaimed himself a genius and raged against the slightest criticism from fellow scholars; he was a Marxist who despised the 'Idiot People'; he could be generous and affectionate yet hurled insults at his friends; he inveighed against Puritanism but was himself in many ways a Puritan.
In this clear-sighted and absorbing biography, Richard Ollard examines the many sides of Rowse's Protean personality to reveal a man who, whatever he was responding to--public affairs, the arts, natural beauty or events in his personal life--did so with tremendous energy and passion.
"An urbane study of the celebrated historian." -Antonia Fraser, Daily Mail
"Strikes a perfect balance between the Jekyll Rowse and the Hyde Rowse." -Bevis Hillier, Spectator
"Excellent." -Katherine Duncan-Jones, TLS
RICHARD OLLARD (1923 - 2007) was a book editor, historian, and scholar of distinction, awarded the Caird medal by the National Maritime Museum in 1992 and winner (jointly with Norman Lewis) of the Heywood Hill prize for a lifetime's contribution to the pleasure of reading in 1998.
In the words of Stuart Proffitt, "Ollard's approach was not, in the modern way, to try to build up a portrait or narrative by a gigantic accumulation and ordering of details, but to try to penetrate to the heart of the matter, to say directly what he thought was the essence of a situation or individual. He believed that the reader goes to a historian not simply for his researches, but for his judgment."