Wartime Journals

Description: As a British Intelligence Officer during World War II, Hugh Trevor-Roper was expressly forbidden from keeping a diary due to the sensitive and confidential nature of his work. However, he confided a record of his thoughts in a series of slender notebooks inscribed OHMS (On His Majesty's Service). The Wartime Journals reveal the voice and experiences of Trevor-Roper, a war-time ""backroom boy"" who spent most of the war engaged in highly-confidential intelligence work in England - including breaking the cipher code of the German secret service, the Abwehr. He became an expert in German resistance plots and after the war, interrogated many of Hitler's immediate circle, investigated Hitler's death in the Berlin bunker, and personally retrieved Hitler's will from its secret hiding place. The posthumous discovery of Trevor-Roper's secret journals - unknown even to his family and closest confidants - is an exciting archival find and provides an unusual and privileged view of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany. At the same time, they offer an engaging - sometimes mischievous - and reflective study of both the human comedy and personal tragedy of wartime.

Brief description: Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003) was Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford, UK for over twenty years, a member of the House of Lords from 1979 and Master of Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge, UK 1980-87. His historical interests included England during the 17th century civil wars, the history of ideas during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, 20th-century espionage and treason, and Hitler's Germany. Trevor-Roper was a senior wartime Intelligence officer, and retained his links with the security services until the 1970s. He also travelled widely overseas as a highly regarded special correspondent for the Sunday Times.

Review Quotes:

.".".the surviving Wartime Journals, now excellently edited by Richard Davenport-Hines, provide us with a fascinating insight into Trevor-Roper himself and the war as well....Often the style of the journals is so highly developed that one has to remind oneself that the author was not even 30 when he put down his thoughts and experiences....""- Brendan Simms, The Wall Street Journal