Carr was born on 11 April 1919 in Bath, Somerset, to Reginald Henry Maillard Carr and his wife Marion. He was educated at Brockenhurst School, then a state secondary school in the New Forest, Hampshire. He then studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected Gladstone Research Exhibitioner in 1941.
Career
Carr was briefly a lecturer at University College, London, in 1945–1946, before returning to Oxford as a Fellow of All Souls College, 1946–1953. He was next a Fellow of New College, 1953–1964, then Director of Oxford's Latin American Centre, 1964–1968 and the University's Professor of the History of Latin America, 1967–68. He became a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1964, Sub-Warden of the college in 1966 and Warden in 1968, a position he held until his retirement in 1987. After his retirement from Oxford, he was King Juan Carlos Professor of Spanish History at New York University in 1992. Carr's successor as Warden of St Antony's, Ralf Dahrendorf, has described Carr's tenure of the post as the College's 'Fiesta days'. As a historian and Hispanist, Carr's main interest lay in the vicissitudes of 19th and 20th century Spain, and he was also a specialist in Latin American and Swedish history. In the words of Sir John Elliott, " his book on Spain between 1808 and 1939 is basic to a better understanding of the era, and the later generation of historians, both within Spain and abroad, have followed up the leads that Carr gives in his book to great benefit." His Modern Spain, 1875-1980 was called by the Times Literary Supplement "a turning point in Spanish historiography - nothing comparable in scope, profundity, or perceptiveness exists." At St Antony's, he established an Iberian Centre, of which he was co-director with Joaquin Romero Maura. Paul Preston wrote in 1984 of their collaboration "Between them, Carr and Romero Maura instilled an intellectual rigour into modern Spanish historiography which had previously been conspicuously lacking." Carr also wrote an extensive foreword to the 1993 edition of The Spanish Labyrinth by Gerald Brenan. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1978, in 1983 he was awarded the Order of Alfonso X el Sabio by King Juan Carlos of Spain and in 1999 the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. He is considered, together with Angus Mackay and Sir John Huxtable Elliott, a major figure in developing Spanish historiography. Carr wrote for The Spectator in 2007 - "I am old-fashioned and aged enough to believe that the best history is the work of the lone individual." His recreation was fox hunting, about which he has written two books, English Fox Hunting: A History, a comprehensive history of fox-hunting from medieval times, and, with his wife Sara Carr, Fox-Hunting.
In 1950, Carr married Sara Ann Mary Strickland, daughter of Algernon Walter Strickland and of Lady Mary Pamela Madeline Sibell Charteris. Sara Strickland's maternal grandfather was Hugo Charteris, 11th Earl of Wemyss, and one of her great-grandfathers was Percy Wyndham, a Conservative politician who was one of The Souls. The Carrs have three sons and one daughter, Adam Henry Maillard Carr, Matthew Xavier Maillard Carr, Laura Selina Madeline Carr, and Alexander Rallion Charles Carr. Their son Adam married Angela P. Barry in 1988, and their daughter Rose Angelica Mary Carr was born in 1991. Matthew, a portrait artist, married Lady Anne Mary Somerset in 1988, and their daughter Eleanor Carr was born in 1992. Laura Carr married Richard E. Barrowclough in 1978 and has four children, Milo Edmond, Conrad Oliver, Theodore Charles, and Sibell Augusta. Carr died on 19 April 2015 at the age of 96.
Two Swedish Financiers: Louis De Geer and Joel Gripenstierna, in H. E. Bell and R. L. Ollard, eds., Historical Essays Presented to David Ogg, London: Black, 1963
