Trevelyan, George Macaulay

Autor: Trevelyan, George Macaulay
Rok: 1876-1962

Biogr./Hist. údaje: Britský historik.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

George Macaulay Trevelyan, OM, CBE, FRS, FBA (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962), was a British historian. Trevelyan was the third son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and great-nephew of Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose staunch liberal Whig principles he espoused in accessible works of literate narrative avoiding a consciously dispassionate analysis, that became old-fashioned during his long and productive career. The noted historian E. H. Carr considered Trevelyan to be one of the last historians of the Whig tradition.Many of his writings promoted the Whig Party, an important aspect of British politics from the 17th century to the mid-19th century, and its successor, the Liberal Party. Whigs and Liberals believed the common people had a more positive effect on history than did royalty and that democratic government would bring about steady social progress.Trevelyan's history is engaged and partisan. Of his Garibaldi trilogy, "reeking with bias", he remarked in his essay "Bias in History", "Without bias, I should never have written them at all. For I was moved to write them by a poetical sympathy with the passions of the Italian patriots of the period, which I retrospectively shared."Once called "probably the most widely read historian in the world; perhaps in the history of the world", Trevelyan lived through two world wars, seeing his belief in progress shaken, and he is little read today.