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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN (1876 - 1962) Trevlyan was the son of George Otto Trevelyan (q.v.) and, like him, belongs to the great tradition of historians in the North East. Though born in Stratford-on-Avon, Trevelyan regarded himself as a Northumbrian and spent much time at Wallington in his youth. His Northumberland residence was Hallington Hall, Great Whittington, some eight miles from Wallington. Trevelyan's works include remarkable books on Garibaldi, for which he walked every mile of the great man's campaigns. Other biographical subjects included John Bright, Grey of Howick and Grey of Fallodon. His nostalgic English Social History (1944) a hymn in praise of ordered freedom, patriotism without arrogance, nationalism without hatred, was a best-seller. Trevelyan's view of literature was that it should not be a set of intellectual conundrums: 'It is joy, joy in our inmost heart.' He was well known for his gleaming spectacles, his famous boots, his enthusiasm and his Homeric laughter. A charmingly impudent rhyme exists, each verse ending 'but can he compare with the Master of Trinity?' On his installation as Chancellor of Durham in May 1950, Trevelyan described the beauties of Northumberland: ' Ours is still the finest county of them all', and in his essay on the Middle Marches of Northumberland published in the Independent Review in 1904, his love of walking and Northumberland are ringingly declared: 'In Northumberland alone both heaven and earth are seen: we walk all day on long ridges, high enough to give far views of moor and valley, and the sense of solitude above the world below... It is a land of far horizons, where the piled or drifted shapes of gathered vapour are for ever moving along the farthest ridge of hills, like the procession of long primeval ages that is written in tribal mounds and Roman camps and Border towers on the breast of Northumberland.'
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