E. H. Carr died on 3 November last. I am inclined to say that he was the greatest British historian of our age: certainly he was the one I most admired. Ted Carr had a long run, varied enough to provide half a dozen careers for any lesser man. He started with twenty years in the diplomatic service, including membership of the British peace delegation to Paris in 1919. After a few years as a professor at Aberystwyth, he was assistant editor of the Times for much of the Second World War, when according to Churchill he turned the paper into a tuppenny edition of the Daily Worker. He published his first masterpiece, a life of Bakunin – a book I hailed at the time as a masterpiece – as long ago as 1937; he published Volume 14 of his History of Soviet Russia shortly before he died and had already made arrangements for it to be carried further by another hand. It is extraordinary to reflect that he began his great work when he was already over sixty and that the latest volumes show no sign of age, except perhaps that they were clearer and more effective than ever.

Carr had great scholarship, great persistence, and above all an unfailing readiness to change his mind with changing circumstances. His first incursion into the discussion of foreign affairs was The Twenty Years’ Crisis, a book surveying the twenty years between the two great wars. Hence he argued that the peace settlement of 1919 was out of date and that British policy should now aim to conciliate Germany. This argument much shocked those, including myself, who wished to resist Germany at all costs, and I remember denouncing Carr as a wicked appeaser. I quoted the old accusation against the Times, with which Ted was already associated, that its policy was ‘to be strong upon the stronger side’.

This mood of Ted’s did not last long. On the German invasion of Russia he decided that the Russians were going to win. Thereafter he never wavered from this decision. This was not merely his preference for the winning side. He had never been happy in his preference for Nazi Germany. He had greater sympathy with Soviet Russia, despite the dictatorship and sometimes the terror that went along with it. Carr was never an apologist for Soviet Russia, except in the sense of asserting that it should be accorded the respect due to any great power. For a long time he believed that Socialism would triumph not only in Russia but throughout most of the world. Towards the end of his life this confidence in the future dwindled under the impact of events. His last volume of essays – flatteringly bearing the same title as an earlier book of mine – ended with the words: ‘I fear this is a profoundly counter-revolutionary period in the West.’

Carr had strong views on contemporary events but he was much more interested in the writing of history. His lectures entitled What is history? are intellectual dynamite, sometimes unrivalled in their wisdom, sometimes in my opinion thoroughly wrong-headed. Carr preached the doctrine that historians should not be interested in the losers, who must go into the dustbin of history. This is what Trotsky said about his Menshevik opponents, and it could also apply to Trotsky himself. I disagreed, yet I cannot think of any argument which might prove Carr wrong. Right or wrong, I venerated him and I am proud to record that Ted Carr and I were bound together by ties of great mutual affection.