G. M. Trevelyan (George Macaulay Trevelyan) Biography

British historian, born in Stratford-on-Avon, the son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan (1838–1928), educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 1927 and was Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951, when he became Chancellor of Durham University. Following the appearance of numerous studies, notably England under the Stuarts (1904), he came to general notice with the trilogy on the Risorgimento which comprised Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic (1907), Garibaldi and the Thousand (1909), and Garibaldi and the Making of Italy (1911). The work, which is pervaded by the liberalism informing much of his writing, exemplifies the dramatic and descriptive qualities intrinsic to his belief that ‘The art of history remains always the art of narrative’. The most widely read historian of his day, his most popular books were A History of England (1926) and English Social History (1944), both of which offer authoritatively encompassing surveys. Blenheim (1930), Ramillies and the Union with Scotland (1932), and The Peace and the Protestant Succession (1934), the three volumes of England under Queen Anne, are often regarded as his essential contribution to historical scholarship. Among his many other works in a career of prolific authorship are the biographies A Life of John Bright (1913) and Grey of Falloden (1937) and An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949). G. M. Trevelyan (1980) is a biographical memoir by his daughter Mary Moorman.