G. M. Trevelyan

G. M. Trevelyan OM CBE FRS FBA
Trevelyan photographed by George Charles Beresford in 1926
6th Chancellor of Durham University
In office 1950–1957
Preceded by	The Marquess of Londonderry
Succeeded by	The Earl of Scarbrough
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
In office 1940–1951
Preceded by	Sir J. J. Thomson
Succeeded by	Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian
Regius Professor of History University of Cambridge
In office 1927–1943
Preceded by	J. B. Bury
Succeeded by	Sir George Clark
Personal details
Born	George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876-02-16)16 February 1876[1] Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died	21 July 1962(1962-07-21) (aged 86) Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Resting place	Holy Trinity Church, Chapel Stile, Great Langdale, Cumbria
Spouse(s)	Janet Trevelyan, née Ward ​ ​ (m. 1904; died 1956)​
Children	3
Occupation	Historian

George Macaulay Trevelyan OM CBE FRS FBA (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962) was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the University of Cambridge and was Regius Professor of History from 1927 to 1943. He served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. In retirement, he was Chancellor of Durham University.

Trevelyan was the third son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and great-nephew of Thomas Babington Macaulay. He espoused Macaulay's staunch liberal Whig principles in accessible works of literate narrative unfettered by scholarly neutrality, his style becoming old-fashioned in the course of his long and productive career. The historian E. H. Carr considered Trevelyan to be one of the last historians of the Whig tradition.^[2]

Many of his writings promoted the Whig Party, an important British political movement from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries, as well as its successor, the Liberal Party. Whigs and Liberals believed the common people had a more positive effect on history than did royalty and that democratic government would bring about steady social progress.^[3]

Trevelyan's history is engaged and partisan. Of his Garibaldi trilogy, "reeking with bias", he remarked in his essay "Bias in History": "Without bias, I should never have written them at all. For I was moved to write them by a poetical sympathy with the passions of the Italian patriots of the period, which I retrospectively shared."^[3]