ABSTRACT
This essay was first published as a review of Geoffrey Barraclough, From Agadir to Armageddon: Anatomy of a Crisis (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982) in the Observer, 31 October 1982. Alan Taylor's attitude towards Geoffrey Barraclough (1908-84) was ambivalent, being often irritated by him yet also supporting him on occasion as a lifelong acquaintance. Alan Taylor had preceded Barraclough as a pupil at Bootham School, York, as an undergraduate at Merton College, Oxford and as a Fellow of the British Academy. In his autobiography, A Personal History (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1983), Taylor wrote of Barraclough that he 'often bit the hand that fed him' but he did write a book for a series that Barraclough was editing, From Sarejevo to Potsdam (London, Thames and Hudson, 1966).
