Royall Tyler (historian)

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Royall Tyler (1884-1953), a descendant of the American jurist and playwright Royall Tyler (1757-1826) was born in Quincy, Massachusetts and educated at Harrow School in England. After a time at New College, Oxford, he moved to the University of Salamanca, where he became a friend of Miguel de Unamuno. In 1909 he published Spain, a Study of her Life and Arts, the first work in English to recognize the genius of El Greco. Appointed editor of the Calendar of State Papers related to negotiations between England and Spain in the time of Charles V, he published the first of the five volumes of these papers in 1913; the last, completed just before his death, appeared in 1954. During World War I he served as an officer in the US Army. In 1919 he joined the US delegation to the Versailles peace conference, and in 1924 the League of Nations appointed him Financial Advisor to the government of Hungary. With Hayford Pierce he published (in French) a pioneering study of Byzantine art, and he died just after completing his posthumously published biography, The Emperor Charles the Fifth. Tyler also helped to inspire and shape the major collections of Pre-Columbian and Byzantine art brought together by Robert Woods Bliss, and housed at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. He spent most of World War Two in Switzerland, where he drew on his high-level, Europe-wide connections to performed vital work for the US intelligence network run by Allen Dulles. He spent his last years in Paris, first with the International Bank for Reconstruction, then as European Representative of the National Committee for a Free Europe.

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