Antony Beevor
Antony Beevor
Antony James Beevor, FRSLis an English military historian. He has published several popular histories on the Second World War and the 20th century in general...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth14 December 1946
obsessive slightly until
I get slightly obsessive about working in archives because you don't know what you're going to find. In fact, you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.
checking room trout valley whether
I used to write in a room overlooking the valley from where I could see too much, whether checking the sheep and alpacas or seeing the trout rise on the lake.
perhaps perverse
I'm often reassured in a bizarre - perhaps perverse - way when I find in the archive stuff that contradicts what my assumptions have been. That's interesting and exciting.
army bored camp ended life planning posted stay training wales wrote
I was planning to stay in the Army all my life, but I ended up being posted to a training camp in Wales and was so bored there, I wrote a novel.
easily history though
Of course history is easily manipulated - though that makes it even more important for us to know what actually happened.
denied history novelists people voice
Some novelists want to give people in history a voice because they have been denied it in the past.
historical industry needs remain truth
Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.
history love
I love 'Blackadder,' but history it certainly ain't.
history weapon
Politicians are often tempted to deploy history as a weapon against each other.
cross despite shot whom
The greatest heroes of the Normandy battlefield were the unarmed medics, whom snipers often shot at despite their Red Cross armbands.
emphasized history influence reason took
The reason that 'Stalingrad' took off was because it emphasized the influence of history on the individual.
bit context experience overall realised
When I started to write, I realised that you need a bit of both: the overall context as well as the individual's experience.
entertainment historical history knowledge lacks main source supposedly
Entertainment history is now the main source of supposedly historical knowledge for more and more people, but 'histo-tainment' is superficial and lacks all context.
army asked aware estonia professor quite war
I was in Estonia when a professor asked me if I was aware that making any criticism of the Red Army during the war was now an imprisonable offence. I was quite shaken.