A half century ago students at American and British universities were well acquainted with the work of Lewis Namier, since two of his books—The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929) and its sequel, England in the Age of the American Revolution (1930)—were indispensable primers in how to study history, illuminating the crucial role of elites in shaping events. To say that nowadays his works are out of fashion is a drastic understatement; we are now told that the really important players in the past were “marginalized peoples”—racial minorities, women, illiterate laborers, and so forth. Why, then, a biography of a historian, and a major one at that, widely regarded as passé? The answer is that the man himself was every bit as interesting as his works. His life sheds much light not only on British academic life but also on high politics in Europe, where he occasionally played a crucial role behind the scenes.

Born Ludwik Bernstein Niemirowski in 1888 in Galicia, the most ethnically diverse province of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the historian was the son of a manorial landowner. An accident of geography meant that he was fluent in Polish, Czech, and German, adding later French, English, and, thanks to two subsequent marriages, Russian as well. Educated at first in Lemburg (Lviv) and subsequently at Lausanne, he immigrated to England in 1907 and enrolled at the London School of Economics. The following year he entered Balliol College, Oxford, where Arnold Toynbee