Our paramount debt, one beyond measure, is to Blair Worden, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s literary executor, who encouraged us to undertake this book, and who has given us far more help in the preparation and revision of it than the editors could expect or adequately thank.
Judith Curthoys, the Christ Church archivist, who has charge of the Dacre papers, has been a wonder of patience and efficiency throughout our work. Rodney Allan has translated, identified, and glossed passages from Greek and Latin, and has done sterling work in correcting the transcription of documents. We are profoundly grateful to both of them.
We are also grateful to Jeremy Cater, Jeremy Catto, Edward Chaney, Frank Giles, the late Earl Haig, Sir Michael Howard, James Howard-Johnston, Alan Macfarlane, Peter Miller, Alasdair Palmer, Richard Rhodes, Zeev Sternhell, the Hon. James Stourton, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, and Blair Worden, who supplied us with letters and consented to their publication.
We thank those who have given permission to reproduce letters to their relations: the Hon. Deborah Blake (to her father Lord Blake); Susan Chater and William Stuart (their father Charles Stuart); Jane Clark (her husband Alan Clark); Alastair Hamilton (his father Hamish Hamilton); Alexandra Henderson (her father Sir Nicholas Henderson); Sarah Holds-worth (her mother Valerie Pearl); Mary Lefkowitz (her husband Hugh Lloyd-Jones); Robin and Vivien Perutz (their father Max Perutz); and Helen Szamuely (her father Tibor Szamuely). Oliver Ramsbotham has kindly allowed us to quote correspondence between his father, Sir Peter Ramsbotham, and Trevor-Roper.
Other debts of gratitude are to the Beinecke Library at Yale, for the letters to Wallace Notestein; the Library of King’s College, Cambridge, for the letters to Noël Annan; the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, for the letters to Gerald Brenan; Claudia Wedepohl, archivist of the Warburg Institute, for consent to reproduce letters to Frances Yates; Henry Hardy and the Isaiah Berlin Trust; the Brotherton Library, Leeds (Special Collections), for the letter to Lord Boyle of Handsworth; the Wellcome Library, for the letter dated 24 February 1973 to Sir Peter Medawar (PP/PBM/D/12); Gertrude Himmelfarb for permission to quote a letter by her of 25 August 1965; Anthony Thwaite for supplying and allowing us to quote a letter to him of 3 September 1976; and the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, for permission to publish an extract from a letter to J. H. Plumb. The quotation from Sir Isaiah Berlin on p. xii is from Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle (eds.), Isaiah Berlin, Building: Letters 1960–1975 (Chatto & Windus 2013), pp. 84–5 © Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust.
Many amendments were made after Henry Woudhuysen’s invaluable scrutiny of the typescript. Numerous other individuals have helpfully answered queries or volunteered information, among them John Adamson, Jeremy Cater, Jeremy Catto, Edward Chaney, Xenia Dennen, Gavin Fuller, Timothy Garton Ash, Mark Greengrass, Miriam Gross, Henry Hardy, Edward Harrison, James Howard-Johnston, Lord Kennet, Paulina Kewes, Mary Lefkowitz, John Maddicott, Peter Miller, John Morgan, Jan Morris, Alasdair Palmer, Philip Pattenden (who has taken particular trouble in answering questions about Cambridge), Christopher Phipps, Richard Rhodes, Norman Stone, James Stourton, Gina Thomas, William Thomas, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, David Wootton, and Brian Young. We are grateful to them all.