Harold William Vazeille Temperley (20 April 1879 – 11 July 1939) was a British historian, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge from 1931, and Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
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Temperley's field was modern diplomatic history, and he was heavily involved as editor in the publication of the British Government's official version of the diplomatic history of the early twentieth century. He also wrote on George Canning and Eastern European history.
He was educated at Sherborne School and latterly at first King's College, Cambridge and Peterhouse, Cambridge.[1]
In World War I he served in the British Army at Gallipoli, and was then seconded to the War Office, working on intelligence and policy in the Balkans. His History of Serbia was published in 1917.
He attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and later worked on an official history of it, on a scheme devised by George Louis Beer and Lord Eustace Percy. He was British representative on the Albanian boundary commission; and was an advisor in 1921 to Arthur Balfour at the League of Nations.
In the compilation of the British Documents on the Origins of the War he collaborated with George Peabody Gooch, (1873-1968), another diplomatic historian and a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party from 1906 to 1910. Gooch had spoken out against British policy in the Second Boer War, and was also a historian of Germany; his appointment was designed to give the project a credible independence.
In the event, Temperley and Gooch were constrained financially, and in the use of documents subject to a 'fifty year rule' limitation on their release. They had to employ tactical resignation threats, to get their own way. Lillian Margery Penson (1896-1963) was involved in this, and a later project on the Blue Books.
The historian Herbert Butterfield was a student of Temperley.
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| Preceded by Sir William Birdwood |
Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge 1938–1939 |
Succeeded by Paul Cairn Vellacott |