Scholars shocked by biography of late historian described as 'robot with no real friends'

By Ephraim Hardcastle for the Daily Mail
Updated: 19:12 EDT, 13 December 2011

Oxford historian: Hugh Trevor-Roper

International scholars are shocked by a biography of the late historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (ennobled in 1979 as Baron Dacre of Glanton) which has come out in America.

Author Adam Sisman says Trevor-Roper was described by an Oxford colleague, Maurice Bowra, as ‘a robot, without human experience, with no girls, no real friends, no capacity for intimacy and no desire to like or be liked’.

His marriage to Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston, 11 years his senior, failed to dispel rumours that he was gay, adds Sisman in An Honourable Englishman: The Life Of Hugh Trevor-Roper.

The scholar notoriously declared as genuine the forged Hitler diaries, a mistake that shattered his reputation. Afterwards, invited to lunch at a friend’s country house, he was found ‘lying in the fetal position on a bed in a spare room, his face turned to the wall’.

A mutual friend says: ‘Hugh was great company and very indiscreet. He once gave me the name of a Cambridge don – a clergyman – who once tried to kill him after an argument, chasing him through the streets and beating on his door like a madman.’

Clever-clogs broadcaster Stephen Fry, has had his left ear pierced for a BBC2 show, I’ve Never Seen Star Wars, to be shown on December 27.

He declined the offer of a ‘Prince Albert’ piercing on his private parts, saying: ‘I just don’t see why! Does it enhance pleasure for the ladies, is that the point?’

Perhaps he should have consulted his BBC colleague, Evan Davis of Radio 4’s Today.

As our best-known Prince Albert expert he is bound to know. 

Private Eye founder Richard Ingrams, 74, ridicules the £25 book launched to mark the magazine’s 50th anniversary this year, calling it a ‘scrapbook’ full of mistakes rather than a history.

He made his remarks – which will anger Ian Hislop, 51, the Eye editor – while introducing the book’s author, Adam Macqueen, at an Oldie literary luncheon yesterday.

Poor Macqueen looked mortified. Ingrams also claims that Macqueen was instructed not to discuss Private Eye’s finances in his book.

Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, 46, the 6ft 8in oligarch who has announced his candidacy for the Russian presidency, may need a little help acquiring the common touch. Asked on TV this month about his new 200ft superyacht, he confided: ‘I never go aboard. I get seasick. I use it solely as a means to transport my jet-ski.’

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been reading Le Diable Au Corps (The Devil In The Flesh), a 1923 novel by Raymond Radiguet about a married woman who has an affair with a 16-year-old boy while her husband is fighting in the First World War.

Sarkozy enjoys a ripe reputation for dalliances himself. As does his 83-year-old father, Pal.

He claims he’s a sex addict and seduced a nanny at the age of 11.