Raymond Carr: The Curiosity of the Fox

Raymond Carr pioneered a new way of looking at modern Spanish history, releasing Spaniards form the shackles of Romantic myth and allowing them to see their nation as a country like any other, rather than one set apart from the rest of Europe. Born in humble circumstances, he journeyed through a fascinating period in twentieth-century British history, vaulting the class barriers that were still very much in place in the England of his day and turning himself into an interested and acutely observant member of the exclusive and decadent world of the late aristocracy, even becoming a keen huntsman. Familiar with the intricate and secret highways and byways of Oxford, both as an undergraduate at Christ Church and, later, as a Fellow of All Souls and of New College, he eventually became Warden of St Antony’s. Throughout his Oxford life, he met and befriended some of the most important, eccentric, and charismatic intellectual figures of the entire twentieth century. But he was also on first-name terms with aristocrats, prime ministers, artists, spies, the foremost U.S. players in the Cold War, and military leaders in Francoist Spain. This biography tells a story that is in some ways stranger than fiction. By tracing the various facets of Raymond Carr’s life and personality – as intellectual, traveller, social chameleon, academic mover and shaker, lover of politics, and unrepentant enquirer into anything and everything to do with life and human history – the author builds a masterly picture of the society into which he was born, the politics and culture of a England that is now lost to us, and the work of one of England’s major Hispanists. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.