A J P Taylor

A. J. P. Taylor, the British scholar, best-selling historian, television raconteur and wry wit who wrote of his final years as a "nuisance," has died in London. He was 84. Taylor, who died Friday, had suffered from Parkinson's disease for the last several years and had been confined to a nursing home for the last two years. Alan John Percivale Taylor, the son of a Lancashire cotton manufacturer, was credited with making two centuries of European history interesting for his international public.

A. J. P. Taylor, the British scholar, best-selling historian, television raconteur and wry wit who wrote of his final years as a "nuisance," has died in London. He was 84. Taylor, who died Friday, had suffered from Parkinson's disease for the last several years and had been confined to a nursing home for the last two years. Alan John Percivale Taylor, the son of a Lancashire cotton manufacturer, was credited with making two centuries of European history interesting for his international public.

British historian A. J .P. Taylor, whose accounts of modern European life and politics became both bestsellers and schoolroom classics, died today, his daughter said. He was 84. He had spent the last two years in a London nursing home after developing Parkinson's disease. Alan John Percivale Taylor was one of Europe's leading authorities on the great conflicts of the 20th Century. He was credited with making history interesting for the public as an author, journalist and television lecturer. A.

British historian A. J .P. Taylor, whose accounts of modern European life and politics became both bestsellers and schoolroom classics, died today, his daughter said. He was 84. He had spent the last two years in a London nursing home after developing Parkinson's disease. Alan John Percivale Taylor was one of Europe's leading authorities on the great conflicts of the 20th Century. He was credited with making history interesting for the public as an author, journalist and television lecturer. A.

When the first news of the Nazi camps was published in 1945, there were those who thought the facts might be exaggerated either by Allied war propaganda or by the human tendency to relish "atrocity stories." In his column in the London magazine Tribune, George Orwell wrote that though this might be so, the speculation was not exactly occurring in a vacuum.

John Erickson, 72, an academic expert on the Soviet Union and the Red Army, died Feb. 10 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The cause of death was not reported. Erickson became interested in the Soviet army while serving with the British army in Austria. "One morning I virtually blundered onto a Soviet armored column, replete with tanks and riflemen," Erickson told an interviewer some years ago.

Dammitall. This wonderful old diarist, curmudgeon, journalist, scholar, prodder and mischief maker A.J.P. Taylor clearly sees what is next in life. His death. He's 78 with Parkinson's disease. There's sleeplessness and sleepiness but neither when appropriate. Not much walking of his beloved British countryside now, he sighs, nothing really important left unsaid and diminished interest in events beyond his North London backyard and the orange marmalade cat squatting there.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union standing out as last year's most memorable event, John Reed's record of the Nov. 7, 1917, Bolshevik revolution makes forceful and pertinent listening. This is particularly true of Jack Hrkach's narration.

Eszter Haraszty, versatile Hungarian-born designer whose work included homes, clothing, paintings, tiles, textiles and stained glass, often with her signature Iceland poppy motif, has died. She was 74. Her husband, food and travel writer Bruce David Colen, said Miss Haraszty died on Thanksgiving in Malibu of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Internationally known for her colorful work, Miss Haraszty served as head of textiles and planning for Knoll International and designed its Paris showroom.

Peter Gay is a distinguished cultural historian of the Enlightenment and the 19th Century who vigorously proposes that historians turn to and use Freud and psychoanalysis to inform their history. He is committed to the classical Freud. He does not play with varied psychoanalytic schools and modifications of clinical theory. Rather, he finds the versatility and the awareness of social context that historians require in the original works of the master.

Think of the most dangerous psychopaths and bullies, all the mass murderers, the worst serial killers and the most sadistic torturers you have ever heard or read about. Multiply their number by several thousand. Imagine organizing such people and putting them in power in government, in charge of the police, of the military, of all the jails. Suppose they have complete control over every aspect of your life. Your imagination will probably fall far short of comprehending the Nazi Holocaust.

On the British literary scene, Anthony Burgess is most notorious for a monument to wounded vanity that he created in 1984. The Times of London had published, after consultation with all sorts of literary bigwigs, its list of the 100 Best Novels since 1939. The name Anthony Burgess was not in the roll of authors. Mortally piqued, Burgess at once set to and wrote a book called "Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939."