Edward Hallett Carr (1892-1982), renowned 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? . Seconded from Cambridge to the Foreign Office during the First World War, initially to ensure trade with Tzarist Russia and subsequently to administer the Allied blockade of the new Soviet Republic. He attended the post-war Paris peace talks on behalf of Britain, where he witnessed at first hand the unfolding drama of the revolution which was to become the centrepiece of his life's work. Marooned at the British Embassy in Riga during the late 1920s, Carr threw himself into the study of Russian language and literature, producing his sparkling account of nineteenth-century revolutionaries, The Romantic Exiles, in 1933. At the Foreign Office and as The Times leader writer during the Second World War, Carr was an influential opinion-maker, using the platform of Printing House Square to mount a forceful intervention for a more egalitarian policy in the rebuilding of the post-War world.
Reference: Jonathan Haslam, The Vices of Integrity E. H. Carr 1892-1982 (Verso, London, New York, 1999).
From the guide to the Papers of E. H. Carr, 1916-1964, (University of Birmingham Information Services, Special Collections Department)
