Antony Beevor

Infobox Musical artist


Img_size = 150
Name = Anthony Beevor
Occupation = Author and Historian
Birth Place = ???
Date of Birth = 14 December 1946
Nationality = UK
Genre = Modern History/ Fiction|

Antony James Beevor (born 14 December 1946) is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous historian of World War II, John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for 5 years before resigning his commission. He has published several popular histories on the Second World War and 20th century in general.

Overview

He is a visiting professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. He is descended from a long line of women writers, being a son of Carinthia "Kinta" Beevor (1911- August 1995), herself the daughter of Lina Wakefield, and a descendant of Lucie Duff-Gordon (author of a travelogue on Egypt). Kinta Beevor wrote "A Tuscan Childhood". Antony Beevor is married to Hon. Artemis Cooper,daughter of Duff Cooper, granddaughter of Lady Diana Cooper.

Between leaving the Army and commencing writing, he was an Account Executive at Masius Wynne Williams, working on Rank Hovis McDougall products.

His best known works, the best-selling "Stalingrad" and "Berlin - The Downfall 1945" 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. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/1998/04/25/bosta25.xml telegraph.co.uk] ] [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/04/28/bobee28.xml telegraph.co.uk] ] [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E2DF143CF935A1575BC0A96E958260 nytimes.com] ] Beevor's works have been used as sources and credited as such in many recent documentary films about WWII. Another one of his best known works is "Crete: The Battle and the Resistance" for which he won the Runciman Prize, administered by the Anglo-Hellenic League for stimulating interest in Greek history and culture.

Criticism

has encountered criticism in Russia. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/25/wruss25.xml telegraph.co.uk] ] The Russian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies" and"slander against the people who saved the world fromNazism." [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/01/25/dt2506.xml telegraph.co.uk] ] O.A. Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association ofWorld War II Historians, has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting thediscredited and racist views of Neo-Nazi historians, who depictedSoviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes". [ [http://gpw.tellur.ru/page.html?r=books&s=beevor Review of Berlin: 1945] (Russian)] Other western historians such as Richard Overy have criticised Russian "outrage" at the book and defended Beevor. Overy accused the Russians of refusing to acknowledge Soviet war crimes, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history" [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1939174.stm BBC News | EUROPE | Red Army rapists exposed ] ] .

This criticism centres on the book's discussion of atrocities committed by the Red Army against German civilians - in particular, the extremely widespread rape of German women and female Russian forced labourers, both before and after the end of the war.Fact|date=April 2008

Published works

He has written twelve books, novels and non-fiction.

Antony Beevor has edited books, including:
* "A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945" by Pravda propagandist Vasily Grossman.

He has also contributed to several other books, including:
* "The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century", ed by Hew Strachan
* "What Ifs? of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been", by Robert Cowley (Editor), Antony Beevor and Caleb Carr. (2003)

Awards

*"Crete: The Battle and the Resistance"
**Runciman Prize

*"Stalingrad"
**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 1936-39" (Spanish Edition)
**"La Vanguardia" Prize for Non-Fiction

References

External links

* [http://www.antonybeevor.com/ Official website] with a list of his published books and some extracts.
* [http://www.antonybeevor.com/Biography/biography.htm Biography of Antony Beevor]
* [http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma_new/summary/be35-001.shtml Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives: Beevor, Antony (b 1946)]
* [http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/Antony_Beevor.html Antony Beevor Stalingrad Berlin - The Downfall 1945]