Antony Beevor
Author of Stalingrad
About the Author
British historian Antony Beevor was born on December 14, 1946. He was educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst and studied under the well-known World War Two historian, John Keegan. Beevor was an officer with the 11th Hussars for five years before becoming a writer. His works have received show more awards including the Runciman Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. The French government made him a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1997, and in 2008 the president of Estonia awarded him the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana. In 1999 Beevor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received the 2014 Pritzker Military Museum and Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. In 2015 he made The New Zealand Best Seller List with his title Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Antony Beevor
The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II (2018) — Author — 704 copies, 11 reviews
La Chûte De Berlin 1 copy
De strijd om Spanje 1 copy
Het Ardennenoffensief 1 copy
De slag om Arnhem 1 copy
Rasputin 1 copy
Associated Works
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary (1954) — Introduction, some editions — 2,098 copies, 72 reviews
Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy (2011) — Preface, some editions — 1,030 copies, 28 reviews
What Ifs? of American History : Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (2003) — Contributor — 537 copies, 7 reviews
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Autumn 1998 (1998) — Author "Stalingrad" — 14 copies
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Summer 2002 (2002) — Author "Assault on the Reichstag" — 6 copies
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Spring 2015 (2015) — Translator and editor "Experience: This Terrible Truth" — 3 copies
A German Life: A Play by Christopher Hampton – Drawn from the Life and Testimony of Brunhilde Pomsel [programme] (2019) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Beevor, Antony
- Birthdate
- 1946-12-14
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Winchester College
Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst - Occupations
- army officer
historian
professor
novelist - Organizations
- British Army (11 Hussars)
- Awards and honors
- Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier)
Royal Society of Literature (Fellow) - Relationships
- Cooper, Artemis (wife)
Beevor, Kinta (mother)
Norwich, John Julius (father-in-law)
Waterfield, Lina (grandmother)
Duff Gordon, Lucie (great-great-grandmother)
Austin, Sarah (great-great-great-grandmother) (show all 7)
Ross, Janet (great-great-aunt) - Short biography
- Antony Beevor was born in London, England, to a literary family. His mother Kinta Beevor was an author and the daughter, granddaughter, great-niece, and great-granddaughter of memoirists, journalists, and translators. His father Jack Beevor was a successful lawyer. Antony was educated at Winchester College and the British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where he studied under John Keegan. After an early career in the army, he became a full-time writer. He has published four novels, beginning with Violent Brink (1975) and more than 10 nonfiction works, many of them focused on World War II. They include Stalingrad (1998), which won the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature; Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (1991), which won a Runciman Prize; and Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949 (1994), written with his wife Artemis Cooper. His book Berlin: The Downfall 1945, (2002), a bestseller, received the first Longman-History Today Trustees’ Award.and was accompanied by a BBC program on his research into the subject. With his Russian research assistant, Lyubov Vinogradova, he edited the wartime papers of Vasily Grossman, published as A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Map Location
- UK
Members
Reviews
In many ways the updated and expanded version of 'A Bridge too Far', with the story being told in a series of vivid vignettes and personal anecdotes. It is superior to A Bridge too Far, as Beevor doesn't focus as much to the race to the bridge at Arnhem, but gives due attention to the problems of the US airborne down the corridor, the German reactions and above all, the Dutch, who -rightly- figure largely in this book. The failed attempt at Arnhem did a lot to make the last war winter show more particularly miserable for the Dutch, something Beevor points out explicitly. None of the British upper echelon commanders come out very well in this book. Market Garden was a last attempt by the British to take the lead in conduct of the war, and was a grand failure.
As Bornanalog mentioned in his review on this site, Beevor doesn't go for the 'heroic failure' angle. We get the story of a lot of people getting killed because of overoptimistic and shoddy planning and command decisions. show less
As Bornanalog mentioned in his review on this site, Beevor doesn't go for the 'heroic failure' angle. We get the story of a lot of people getting killed because of overoptimistic and shoddy planning and command decisions. show less
Only the excellence and clarity of Beevor's writing made this book endurable. The subject matter made it a 479-page slog through death, cruelty, pain, incompetence, betrayal and confusion. Beevor's work presents a fascinating story of a tragic event in history, but an event during which, through the eyes of this modern, democracy-admiring reader, barely one single attractive event occurs.
Well I should qualify that: the bravery and heroism of the usually undermanned and overmatched soldiers show more fighting on the republican side against Franco's forces, often despite the incompetence and stubbornness of their own generals, was admirable indeed. But good gracious, it is depressing to read of the hypocracy of England and France and the U.S. who, in the name of "non-interventionism," assured that arms would get to Franco's forces but not to those defending Spain from fascist generals. And it is depressing to read of the success the Spanish Communists had in marginalizing and terrorizing most of their political partners in the struggle against Franco and who were willing, as military commanders late in the war, to sacrifice the lives of thousands of their soldiers in hopeless and vain attempts to win propaganda victories. And that's the short list.
But, again, that's not to blame Beevor for his subject matter. His ability to write about all these things clearly and compellingly, and to sort out the many political movements and their incessant comings and goings, is nothing short of admirable. Beevor also does a terrific job of going back centuries to quickly and clearly set up the long-developing contexts for the political, class and religious histories that made passions run so high and animosities so fervent and entrenched once the explosion occurred with the military rising against the civilian government in 1936.
So this is a very, very good book, but a very difficult work to read. That said, I'm very glad to have read it. show less
Well I should qualify that: the bravery and heroism of the usually undermanned and overmatched soldiers show more fighting on the republican side against Franco's forces, often despite the incompetence and stubbornness of their own generals, was admirable indeed. But good gracious, it is depressing to read of the hypocracy of England and France and the U.S. who, in the name of "non-interventionism," assured that arms would get to Franco's forces but not to those defending Spain from fascist generals. And it is depressing to read of the success the Spanish Communists had in marginalizing and terrorizing most of their political partners in the struggle against Franco and who were willing, as military commanders late in the war, to sacrifice the lives of thousands of their soldiers in hopeless and vain attempts to win propaganda victories. And that's the short list.
But, again, that's not to blame Beevor for his subject matter. His ability to write about all these things clearly and compellingly, and to sort out the many political movements and their incessant comings and goings, is nothing short of admirable. Beevor also does a terrific job of going back centuries to quickly and clearly set up the long-developing contexts for the political, class and religious histories that made passions run so high and animosities so fervent and entrenched once the explosion occurred with the military rising against the civilian government in 1936.
So this is a very, very good book, but a very difficult work to read. That said, I'm very glad to have read it. show less
A tour de force by Beevor, resulting in one of the best books I have read on war and the evil that men do. In the west, we tend to forget about how the Eastern Front was far bigger than the Western Front and more influential for the outcome of World War II. Beevor does extremely well in laying out the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa, the key figures involved, the German advance across Eastern Europe and then Stalingrad, the battle itself and (Warning: Spoiler alert) the German retreat.
My show more favourite part of "Stalingrad" is the very personal stories of the frontline soldiers that Beevor sources from letters and reports. Senior soldiers found comatose drunk near the front lines, defecting soldiers getting lost and, mistaking Russian officers for Germans, announcing his defection, and small orphaned children somehow surviving in the apocalyptic conditions of Stalingrad.
It's time to move on to read Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall". show less
My show more favourite part of "Stalingrad" is the very personal stories of the frontline soldiers that Beevor sources from letters and reports. Senior soldiers found comatose drunk near the front lines, defecting soldiers getting lost and, mistaking Russian officers for Germans, announcing his defection, and small orphaned children somehow surviving in the apocalyptic conditions of Stalingrad.
It's time to move on to read Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall". show less
Wow, what a tour de force. What a terrible, dour, terrifying chapter in human history.
There were chapters in this book that made me want to throw up. There were chapters where I wanted to grab one of the protagonists and shout sense into them. There were chapters of unimaginable courage, despair, perseverance, tragedy.
I have not read any history of WWII before, and had not yet grasped the scale of this conflict, and of the suffering it inflicted. This book offered a great overview of the show more war, and made me realize just how lucky we are to live in peaceful times. show less
There were chapters in this book that made me want to throw up. There were chapters where I wanted to grab one of the protagonists and shout sense into them. There were chapters of unimaginable courage, despair, perseverance, tragedy.
I have not read any history of WWII before, and had not yet grasped the scale of this conflict, and of the suffering it inflicted. This book offered a great overview of the show more war, and made me realize just how lucky we are to live in peaceful times. show less
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- 44
- Also by
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- 19,737
- Popularity
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- Rating
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- ISBNs
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