G. M. Trevelyan

He returned to the University of Cambridge and was Regius Professor of History from 1927 to 1943. He served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. In retirement, he was Chancellor of Durham University. Trevelyan was the third son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and great-nephew of Thomas Babington Macaulay. He espoused Macaulay's staunch liberal Whig principles in accessible works of literate narrative unfettered by scholarly neutrality, his style becoming old-fashioned in the course of his long and productive career. The historian E. Carr considered Trevelyan to be one of the last historians of the Whig tradition. Many of his writings promoted the Whig Party, an important British political movement from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries, as well as 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. 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."

Trevelyan studied at Harrow School, Trinity College and Wixenford School. The recorded working language is English and Slovene. Employment is recorded with University of Cambridge. Positions recorded include Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and Regius Professor of History, Cambridge University. Distinctions recorded are Commander of the Order of the British Empire, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Fellow of the British Academy and Serena Medal.

• Name — G. M. Trevelyan • Order1 — 6th • Office1 — Chancellor of Durham University • Term Start1 — 1950 • Term End1 — 1957 • Predecessor1 — The Marquess of Londonderry • Successor1 — The Earl of Scarbrough • Office2 — Master of Trinity College, Cambridge • Term Start2 — 1940 • Term End2 — 1951 • Predecessor2 — Sir J. J. Thomson • Successor2 — Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian • Office3 — Regius Professor of History University of Cambridge • Term Start3 — 1927 • Term End3 — 1943 • Predecessor3 — J. B. Bury • Successor3 — Sir George Clark • Birth Name — George Macaulay Trevelyan • Born — 16 February 1876 • Birthplace — Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England • Died — 21 July 1962 • Place of death — Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England • Resting Place — Holy Trinity Church, Chapel Stile, Great Langdale, Cumbria • Occupation — Historian • Children — 3

• Illustration — Trevelyan in 1910 with his eldest son, Theo, and father, Sir G. O. Trevelyan. Theo died of appendicitis in 1911. Trevelyan was born into late Victorian Britain in Welcombe House, Stratford-on-Avon, the large house and estate owned by his maternal grandfather, Robert Needham Philips, a wealthy Lancashire merchant and the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Bury. Today Welcombe is a hotel and spa for tourists visiting Shakespeare's birthplace. On his paternal side, he was the third son of Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, who had served as Secretary for Scotland, under Liberal Prime Ministers William Gladstone, and the Earl of Rosebery, and the grandson of Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, who had served as a civil servant and had faced considerable criticism for his and the British government's handling of the Great Famine of Ireland. Trevelyan's parents used Welcombe as a winter resort after they inherited it in 1890. They looked upon Wallington Hall, the Trevelyan family estate in Northumberland, as their real home. After attending Wixenford and Harrow, where he specialised in history, Trevelyan studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the secret society the Cambridge Apostles and founder of the still existing Lake Hunt, a hare and hounds chase where both hounds and hares are human. In 1898, he won a fellowship at Trinity with a dissertation that was published the following year as England in the Age of Wycliffe. One professor at the university, Lord Acton, enchanted the young Trevelyan with his great wisdom and his belief in moral judgement and individual liberty.

Trevelyan made his own reputation by depicting Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi as a great hero who stood for British ideals of liberty. According to historian David Cannadine: [Trevelyan's] great work was his Garibaldi trilogy (1907–11), which established his reputation as the outstanding literary historian of his generation. It depicted Garibaldi as a Carlylean hero—poet, patriot, and man of action—whose inspired leadership created the Italian nation. For Trevelyan, Garibaldi was the champion of freedom, progress, and tolerance, who vanquished the despotism, reaction, and obscurantism of the Austrian empire and the Neapolitan monarchy. The books were also notable for their vivid evocation of landscape (Trevelyan had himself followed the course of Garibaldi's marches), for their innovative use of documentary and oral sources, and for their spirited accounts of battles and military campaigns. Historian Lucy Voakes argues that his Garibaldi project was part of a larger movement among English intellectuals to consolidate, celebrate and sometimes critique liberal culture and politics. She sees Trevelyan's conception of the hero, and his study of the Italian Risorgimento emerging from his promotion of a distinctly "English" patriotism based upon Whig gradualism, parliamentary monarchy and a hierarchical anti-republicanism.

Trevelyan lectured at Cambridge until 1903, at which point he left academic life to become a full-time writer. In 1927, he returned to the university to take up a position as Regius Professor of Modern History, where the single student whose doctorate he agreed to supervise was J. H. Plumb (1936). During his professorship, he was also familiar with Guy Burgess – he gave a positive reference for Burgess when he applied for a post at the BBC in 1935, describing him as a "first rate man", but also stating that "He has passed through the communist measles that so many of our clever young men go through, and is well out of it". In 1940 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College and served in the post until 1951 when he retired. Trevelyan declined the presidency of the British Academy but served as chancellor of Durham University from 1950 to 1958. Trevelyan College at Durham University is named after him. He won the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1925, made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1950, and was an honorary doctor of many universities including Cambridge.

Shocked by the horrors of the Great War he saw as an ambulance driver just behind the front lines, Trevelyan became more appreciative of conservatism as a positive force, and less insistent that progress was inevitable. In History of England (1926), he searched for the deepest meaning of English history. Cannadine says he reported they were "the nation's evolution and identity: parliamentary government, the rule of law, religious toleration, freedom from continental interference or involvement, and a global horizon of maritime supremacy and imperial expansion". Cannadine concluded in G.M. Trevelyan: A Life in History (1992): During the first half of the twentieth century Trevelyan was the most famous, the most honored, the most influential and the most widely read historian of his generation. He was a scion of the greatest historical dynasty that (Britain) has ever produced. He knew and corresponded with many of the greatest figures of his time... For fifty years, Trevelyan acted as a public moralist, public teacher and public benefactor, wielding unchallenged cultural authority among the governing and the educated classes of his day. Once called "probably the most widely read historian in the world; perhaps in the history of the world", Trevelyan saw how two world wars shook the belief in progress. Historiography had changed and the belief in progress declined. Roy Jenkins argued: Trevelyan's reputation as a historian barely survived his death in 1962. He is now amongst the great unread, widely regarded by the professionals of a later generation as a pontificating old windbag, as short on cutting edge as on reliable facts. On the other hand, J. H. Plumb argued:

Trevelyan was a prolific author: • His first book, based on his fellowship dissertation. The title of this work is somewhat misleading since it concentrates on the political, social and religious conditions of England during the later years of Wycliffe's life only. Six of the nine chapters are devoted to the years 1377–1385, while the last two treat the history of the Lollards from 1382 until the Reformation. The work is critical of Roman Catholicism in favour of Wycliffe. • Covers 1603 to 1714. * • This volume marks the entry of a new foreign historian in the field of Italian Risorgimento, a period much neglected, or, unworthily treated, outside of Italy. * • (2001 ed.) * * * * * * * * * • His magnum opus in 3 volumes: "Blenheim" (1930), "Ramillies and the Union with Scotland" (1932), "Peace and the Protestant Succession" (1934). * * • Portrays James II as a tyrant whose excesses led directly to the Glorious Revolution. * • Published during World War Two, it painted a nostalgic picture of England's glorious past as the beacon of liberty and progress, stirring patriotic feelings and becoming his best selling book, also his last major history book. * * * * *

The authorities additionally record the headings George Macauley Trevelyan and George Macaulay Trevelyan. His recorded languages were English and Slovene.

He was employed by University of Cambridge. Recorded positions include Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Regius Professor of History, Cambridge University and Chancellor of Durham University. He belonged to Royal Society, British Academy, Polish Academy of Learning, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Recognition and collections. Trevelyan received Commander of the Order of the British Empire, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Fellow of the British Academy, Serena Medal, Fellow of the Royal Society and Order of Merit.