A.J.P. Taylor, born Allan John Percivale Taylor in Lancashire, England in 1906, was a celebrated historian and journalist. He graduated from Oxford with first class honors in history in 1927. He served in the Home Guard during World War II and later became a history lecturer at several universities. He wrote several seminal texts on 19th and 20th century history, his most famous and controversial being The Origins of the Second World War, published in 1961. Along with writing books, Taylor also worked extensively in print and broadcast journalism. Married three times, he had six children. He died in 1990.