Antony Beevor

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.

Born in Kensington, Beevor was educated at two independent schools; Abberley Hall School in Worcestershire, followed by Winchester College in Hampshire. He then went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he studied under the military historian John Keegan before receiving a commission in the 11th Hussars on 28 July 1967. Beevor served in England and Germany and was promoted to lieutenant on 28 January 1969 before resigning his commission on 5 August 1970.

Beevor has been a visiting professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, and at the University of Kent. He was the 2002-2003 Lees-Knowles Lecturer at Cambridge University.

His best-known works, the best-selling Stalingrad (1998) and Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (2002), recount the World War II battles between the Soviet Union and Germany. They have been praised for their vivid, compelling style, their treatment of the ordinary lives of combatants and civilians, and the use of newly disclosed documents from Soviet archives.

His The Spanish Civil War (1982) was later re-written as The Battle for Spain (2006), keeping the structure and some content from the earlier work, but using the updated narrative style of his Stalingrad book and also adding characters and new archival research from German and Russian sources.

Beevor's book The Second World War (2012) is notable for its focus on the conditions and grief faced by women and civilians and for its coverage of the war in East Asia, which has been called "masterful". Beevor's expertise has been the subject of some commentary; his publications have been praised as revitalizing interest in World War II topics and have allowed readers to reevaluate events such as D-Day from a new perspective. He has also appeared as an expert in television documentaries related to World War II.

Overall, his works have been translated into 35 languages with more than 8.5 million copies sold.

In August 2015, Russia's Yekaterinburg region considered banning Beevor's books, accusing him of Nazi sympathies, citing his lack of Russian sources when writing about Russia, and claiming he had promoted false stereotypes introduced by Nazi Germany during World War II. Beevor responded by calling the banning "a government trying to impose its own version of history", comparing it to other "attempts to dictate a truth", such as denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide.

In January 2018, Beevor's book about the Battle of Stalingrad was attacked in Ukraine because of a single mistranslation in the Russian edition.Beevor told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: "I must say, this sounds absolutely astonishing. There's certainly nothing inherently anti-Ukrainian in the book at all."

Beevor is descended from a long line of writers, starting with the legal philosopher John Austin and his wife Sarah, their daughter Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon (Letters from Egypt), his grandmother Lina Waterfield, (Observer correspondent and Castle in Italy), and his mother Kinta Beevor (A Tuscan Childhood).Antony Beevor is married to biographer The Honourable Artemis Cooper; they have two children, Nella and Adam.

Beevor was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for "services in support of Armed Forces Professional Development".

He is a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a member of Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana and a commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Beevor was awarded an Honorary D.Litt. from the University of Kent in 2004, from the University of Bath in 2010, the University of East Anglia in 2014 and the University of York in 2015. He was elected an honorary Fellow of King's College London in July 2016.

Beevor, a former chair and member of the Council of the Society of Authors, resigned with Sir Philip Pullman in 2022 in protest over the actions of the CEO and the leadership of the management committee.

• Crete: The Battle and the Resistance won the Runciman Prize, administered by the Anglo-Hellenic League for stimulating interest in Greek history and culture.
• Stalingrad
  • The first Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
  • Wolfson History Prize
  • Hawthornden Prize for Literature
• Berlin: The Downfall 1945
  • Longman-History Today Trustees' Award
• The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 (Spanish Edition)
  • La Vanguardia Prize for Non-Fiction

Beevor was recognised with the 2014 Pritzker Military Museum & Library's Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Tim O'Brien, the 2013 recipient, made the announcement on behalf of the selection committee. The award carried a purse of US$100,000.

In July 2016, Beevor was awarded the Medlicott Medal for services to history by the UK-based Historical Association.

Fiction

• Violent Brink. London: John Murray, 1975. ISBN 978-0-7195-3241-2
• For Reasons of State. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980. ISBN 978-0-224-01930-9
• The Faustian Pact. London: Jonathan Cape, 1983. ISBN 978-0-02-030461-6
• The Enchantment of Christina von Retzen. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. ISBN 978-0-297-79523-0

Nonfiction

• 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

Edited volumes

• A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945 by Vasily Grossman. ISBN 978-0-375-42407-6

Book contributions

• The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century, ed by Hew Strachan ISBN 978-0-7146-8069-9
• What Ifs? of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, by Robert Cowley (Editor), Antony Beevor and Caleb Carr. (2003) ISBN 978-0-425-19818-6