About Me

My photo
I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Saturday, December 14, 2024


Happy Birthday: Sir Antony James Beevor, FRSL (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works, mainly on the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War, and most recently the Russian Revolution and Civil War.

Educated at Abberley Hall School, Winchester College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Beevor commanded a troop of tanks in the 11th Hussars in Germany before deciding in 1970 to leave the army and become a writer.

He was a visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London, and the University of Kent. His best-selling books, Stalingrad (1998) and Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (2002), have been acclaimed for their detailed coverage of the battles between the Soviet Union and Germany, and their focus on the experiences of ordinary people. Berlin proved hugely controversial in Russia because of the information it contained from former Soviet archives about the mass rapes carried out by the Red Army in 1945. He was condemned for "lies, slander and blasphemy" against the Red Army by the Russian ambassador at the time, Grigory Karasin, and was frequently described as "the chief slanderer of the Red Army" by Kremlin-supporting media.

His works have been translated into 35 languages and have sold over 8.5 million copies. Beevor has lectured at numerous military headquarters, staff colleges and establishments in Britain, the US, Europe and Australia. He has also written for The Times, The Telegraph and Guardian, the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, as well as El País and ABC in Spain.

The Spanish Civil War. London: Orbis, 1982. ISBN 978-0-14-100148-7

Inside the British Army. London: Chatto and Windus, 1990. ISBN 978-0-552-13818-5

Crete: The Battle and the Resistance. London: John Murray, 1991. ISBN 978-0-14-016787-0

with Artemis Cooper. Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949. London: Penguin, 1994.

Stalingrad. London: Viking Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-670-87095-0

Berlin: The Downfall 1945. London: Penguin, 2002. ISBN 978-0-670-03041-5 (Published as The Fall of Berlin 1945 in the U.S.)

The Mystery of Olga Chekhova. London: Penguin, 2004. ISBN 978-0-670-03340-9

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006. ISBN 978-0-14-303765-1

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. London: Penguin, 2009. ISBN 978-0-670-02119-2

The Second World War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012. ISBN 978-0-316-02374-0

Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble. Viking, 2015. ISBN 978-0-670-91864-5

Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. Viking, 2018. ISBN 978-0-241-32676-3

Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917—1921. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022. ISBN 978-1-474-61014-8

No comments: