The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield

Description

This book is the first biography of the celebrated historian Sir Herbert Butterfield, written with exclusive access to private sources. Once recalled only for The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and Christianity and History (1949), Sir Herbert Butterfield's contribution to western culture has undergone an astonishing revaluation over the past twenty years. What has been left out of this reappraisal is the man himself. Yet the force of Butterfield's writings is weakened without some knowledge of the man behind them: his temperament, contexts and personal torments. Previous authors have been unable to supply a rounded portrait for lack of available material, particularly a dearth of sources for the crucial period before the outbreak of war in 1939. Michael Bentley's original, startling biography draws on sources never seen before. They enable him to present a new Butterfield, one deeply troubled by self-doubt, driven by an urgent sexuality and plagued by an unending tension between history, science and God in a mind as hard and cynical as it was loving and charitable. - Publisher.

Description

"Once recalled only for The Whig interpretation of history (1931) and Christianity and history (1949), Sir Herbert Butterfield's contribution to western culture has undergone an astonishing revaluation over the past twenty years. What has been left out of this reappraisal is the man himself. Yet the force of Butterfield's writings is weakened without some knowledge of the man behind them: his temperament, contexts, and personal torments. Previous authors have been unable to supply a rounded portrait for lack of available material, particularly a dearth of sources for the crucial period before the outbreak of war in 1939. Michael Bentley's original, startling biography draws on sources never seen before. They enable him to present a new Butterfield, one deeply troubled by self-doubt, driven by an urgent sexuality and plagued by an unending tension between history, science and God in a mind as hard and cynical as it was loving and charitable"-- "When Sir Herbert Butterfield died in 1979, he had already lost most of his audience. Those in the second half of their life might recall The Whig interpretation of history, if they had been made to read it at school, though its rubbishing thirty years later by E.H. Carr in What is history? provided fresher memories. Or they may have had on their shelf at home Christianity and history, which had created a flurry of interest on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1950s. The postwar British generation heard, many of them, the radio broadcasts--often in school--or the endless lectures that Butterfield had delivered to the Historical Association or the columns he occasionally contributed to the press. But it was all a long time ago: they knew the name, the Yorkshire voice perhaps, but little else. For the professional historians, among whom Butterfield had spent most of his life, he remained a considerable force but one marked by failure"--

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