Introduction: E.H. Carr — a Critical Appraisal

Abstract

When Edward Hallett Carr died in 1982 at the age of 90 there was a definite sense in Britain at least that somebody rather special had passed from the scene, for Carr had — in his own, idiosyncratic and very English way — become part of the intellectual furniture, a monument to scholarship recognized and admired even by those many people he had annoyed and upset over the years. Naturally, not everybody was his fan. Some indeed disliked his work enormously. But the overwhelming majority of commentators seemed to stand in awe of the great man. The distinguished historian James Joll was one such, and in a review written only a few months after Carr’s death described Carr’s work, and in particular his several volumes on the Soviet Union, as ‘one of the great historiographical achievements of our time’.¹ This point was taken up by others, including his old ally in many a Cold War battle, A.J.P. Taylor. Taylor agreed: Carr was without peer. Though, in a typically impish article, Taylor went on to point out that while Carr was ‘a very great historian’ he sometimes took silly things — notably the Communist International — much too seriously. But there was no doubting his standing.² Even his old newspaper, The Times, conceded that Carr was a most ‘eminent historian’. There was, it was true, something deeply ‘enigmatic’ about his character; and it hinted, darkly, that he seemed to be ‘happier with documents than he was with people’. Yet he had achieved a great deal and left a ‘strong mark on successive generations of historians and social thinkers’. He certainly appeared to have left a strong mark on the paper itself, who paid him the very great compliment of devoting not one, but three full columns to describing the life and times of their former employee!³