An Historian in Peace and War : The Diaries of Harold Temperley, 1900-1939
- Submitting institution
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The University of East Anglia
- Unit of assessment
- 28 - History
- Output identifier
- 182635535
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Ashgate
- ISBN
- 9781138248229
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The volume, with a 35-page introduction by the editor, brings to light a set of remarkable and vivid diaries that had lain undisturbed for nearly a century in a tin trunk. Working closely with Temperley’s family, in whose possession Harold Temperley’s diaries and papers have been since his death in 1939. Thomas Otte transliterated the diaries from 1916 until 1939 with illuminating commentaries and 309 individual annotations as well as a subject index. The edition includes photographs of what Otte refers to his ‘less than legible jottings’. Temperley’s diaries give an almost daily record of his thoughts throughout the First World War and its aftermath, including in-depth information from the newly formed Yugoslav state to which he was dispatched on a secret mission at the turn of 1918/19. As an established historian of British politics and European diplomacy and as the author of A History of Serbia in 1917, his observations were particularly insightful. The diary has been recognized – not least in South Eastern Europe – as an important eyewitness account of war-time decision-making, the problems of making of peace in 1919-20, and of the emergence of the newly independent states in Eastern Europe – Temperley was also involved in delimiting the frontiers of Albania in 1921. Temperley’s influence on intelligence work as well as military and political decision-making was very real. He was not at the very heart of Allied decision-making during those years, but he certainly had a ringside seat. Trained to observe accurately, he recorded the concerns and confusions of his contemporaries, conscious always of the historical significance of what he observed. Otte argues that few contemporary sources match Temperley’s diaries and their unique perspective upon the politics and diplomacy of the First World War and its aftermath alongside those of James Headlam-Morley and Harold Nicolson.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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