The Vices of Integrity: E.H. Carr 1892-1982

Edward Hallet Carr is renowned as the historian of Soviet Russia, biographer of The Romantic Exiles, founder of the ‘realist’ approach to the study of International Relations and author of the classic Trevelyan lecture series, What is History? This sparkling biography reveals how intimately the historian’s grasp of statecraft is related to Carr’s own formative experiences at the center of political events. Seconded from Cambridge to the Foreign Office during World War I to administer the Allied blockade of the new Soviet Republic and attending the post-war Paris peace talks on behalf of the British, Carr witnessed at first hand the unfolding drama of the revolution which was to become the centerpiece of his life’s work. At the Foreign Office, and as Times leader writer during World War II, he was an influential opinion maker whose open-minded attitude to the Soviet Union deprived him of academic posts for the next decade. Jonathan Haslam paints a compelling psychological portrait of a man torn between a vicarious identification with the romance of revolution and the ruthless realism of his own intellectual formation. In his fascinating account of the creation of Carr’s vast 14 volume History of Soviet Russia, Haslam reveals a major historian at his craft.