A Man of Contradictions

A Life of A. L. Rowse

Richard Ollard

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571302864
• Year: 2013

He 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: A. L. Rowse was a man of many contradictions.

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1: Contradictions
• 2: Origins
• 3: Education
• 4: Christ Church
• 5: Success
• 6: 1926
• 7: Germany
• 8: Friendships
• 9: Home and Abroad
• 10: Early Publications
• 11: A Man of the Thirties
• 12: Arts and Letters
• 13: Return to Oxford
• 14: Battles Lost and Won
• 15: Tudor Cornwall and A Cornish Childhood
• 16: Poetry and the Poet
• 17: The Riches of Friendship
• 18: Becoming an Institution
• 19: War in Heaven
• 20: The New World Redresses the Balance
• 21: Some Softening Gleam
• 22: Always Scribble, Scribble, Scribble The Elizabethan Age
• 23: Portraits
• 24: Shakespeare
• 25: A Man of Letters
• 26: Surplus Energy
• 27: Cornwall: In my End is my Beginning
• 28: Sunset
• 29: A Life
• 30: Bells Across the Water
• APPENDIX A: Memorandum of Wardenship Election 1952
• APPENDIX B: Letter to Lord Salter
• APPENDIX C: The Dark Lady
• APPENDIX D: Rowse’s Finances
• APPENDIX E: A Colleague’s Judgment
• APPENDIX F: Some Dates
• APPENDIX G: A Chronological Listing of works by A. L. Rowse mentioned in the text
• APPENDIX H: Guest list for lunch given by ALR for Allan Nevins and Irving Stone in Hall at All Souls, 20 June 1965
• Appendix I: List of Correspondents
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright