As historian and polemicist, Rowse was deeply involved in many of the key debates of the mid-century. He combined Marxist historiography and keen English patriotism, support for modernism with deep attachment to the traditions of the college he loved, All Souls. Above all, he was both an industrious and influential academic historian and an energetic participant in political, cultural and literary life. This engagement reached its zenith in Rowse's principled and vindicated opposition to appeasement.