A J P Taylor

For a long long time I wanted to go to a bar and read, not get drunk and read but just read. I could do that finally. Surprisingly, history (as boring as it may sound) was my companion, and who's better in narrating history than AJP Taylor! For example,

Revolution is for society what passionate love is for the individual; those who experience it are marked for ever, separated from their own past and from the rest of mankind.

And

Marx did not discover (this) class war. He observed it in France (in 1848) and then generalized it as a formula for the future. That is the only way of the prophet: to foretell as the future what has already happened.

There are are numerous such examples :-) I simply love the man