Antony Beevor

Early life and career

Antony James Beevor was born in Kensington, London, on 14 December 1946. He was educated at two independent schools: Abberley Hall School in Worcestershire, and then Winchester College in Hampshire.

He joined the British Army as a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As well as the usual cadet activities, he was able to study under the military historian John Keegan. On graduation he was commissioned in the 11th Hussars on 28 July 1967. Beevor served in England and Germany. He was promoted to lieutenant on 28 January 1969. He resigned his commission on 5 August 1970.

Later career

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 the University of Cambridge.

His best-known works, the best-selling Stalingrad (1998) and Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (2002), recount the Second World War battles between the Soviet Union and Nazi 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.

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 criticised 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. Numerous Russian academic theses and books have been published that dispute his claim as exaggerations, misattributions, or direct citations of propaganda used by Joseph Goebbels, including The Red Army “Rape of Germany” was Invented by Goebbels by the Russian author Anatoly Karlin.

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 revitalising interest in Second World War 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.

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

In August 2015 the Yekaterinburg region considered banning Beevor's books, accusing him of Nazi sympathies and citing his lack of Russian sources when writing about Russia, and claiming he had promoted false stereotypes introduced by Nazi Germany during the war. 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 banned in Ukraine for its description of war crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists collaborating with Nazi forces (namely the execution of children). The official in charge of the decision, Serhiy Oliyinyk, denied the event in question and called it a "provocation" likely emanating from Soviet sources. Beevor refuted the claims of an alleged anti-Ukrainian bent in the book, and pointed out that the source for the passage in question was an Abwehr officer named Helmuth Groscurth, demanding "an immediate apology from Oliyinyk and a reversal of the decision by the 'expert council.'"

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.

Other activities

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

Personal life

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).

He is married to Artemis Cooper, a writer. They have two children, Nella and Adam.

Honours and awards

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.

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

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

He is also 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.

Awards for his works include:

• Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
  • 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

Published works

Fiction

• Violent Brink. London: John Murray, 1975.
• For Reasons of State. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.
• The Faustian Pact. London: Jonathan Cape, 1983.
• The Enchantment of Christina von Retzen. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.

Nonfiction

• The Spanish Civil War. London: Orbis, 1982.
• Inside the British Army. London: Chatto and Windus, 1990.
• Crete 1941: The Battle and the Resistance. London: John Murray, 1991.
• with Artemis Cooper. Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949. London: Penguin, 1994.
• Stalingrad. London: Viking Press, 1998.
• Berlin: The Downfall 1945. London: Penguin, 2002. (Published as The Fall of Berlin 1945 in the U.S.)
• The Mystery of Olga Chekhova. London: Penguin, 2004.
• The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006.
• D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. London: Penguin, 2009.
• The Second World War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012.
• Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble. Viking, 2015.
• Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. Viking, 2018.
• Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917—1921. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022.
• Rasputin: And the Downfall of the Romanovs. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2026.

Edited volumes

• A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945 by Vasily Grossman.

Book contributions

• 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)

References

References

1. "Antony Beevor".
2. (14 December 1946). "Beevor, Antony 1946-".
3. {{London Gazette. (20 October 1967)
4. {{London Gazette. (24 January 1969)
5. {{London Gazette. (7 August 1970)
6. "Biography". antonybeevor.com.
7. (25 April 1998). "Entombed in their own bunkers". The Telegraph.
8. Judd, Alan. (28 April 2002). "Every sort of assault: review of Berlin: the Downfall, 1945 by Antony Beevor". The Telegraph.
9. Bernstein, Richard. (26 September 1998). "An Avalanche of Death That Redirected a War". The New York Times.
10. (25 January 2002). "Russians angry at war rape claims".
11. Archives, The National. (2013-03-25). "The National Archives - Writer of the month: Stalingrad and Berlin - researching the reality of war {{!}} The National Archives".
12. (December 26, 2019). "Миф об "изнасилованной Германии" сочинил Геббельс".
13. (2006-06-24). "Review: The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor". [[The Guardian]].
14. "The Second World War". Kirkus.
15. (7 September 2012). "Many Wars in One". [[The New York Times]].
16. (21 July 2012). "Beevor unleashes a blitzkrieg". [[The Sydney Morning Herald]].
17. (31 May 2009). "In praise of ... Antony Beevor". [[The Guardian]].
18. "Red Army rapists exposed". [[BBC News]].
19. "When TV Goes to War". BBC.
20. (19 October 2014). "Antony Beevor: 'I deserved to fail history. I was bolshie...'". The Telegraph.
21. Ignacio Villarreal. "Russia orders libraries to ditch 'Nazi' books by British historians".
22. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/05/russian-region-bans-british-historians-books-from-schools Walker, Shaun. 2015. Russian Region Bans British Historians' Books from Schools. ''The Guardian'' (5 August).]
23. [https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/russia-bans-books-on-nazi-defeat-by-british-historians-km8nvrwwlbg Spiro, Zachary. 2015. Russia Bans Books on Nazi Defeat by British Historians. ''The Times'' (6 August).]
24. Beevor, Antony. (5 August 2015). "By banning my book, Russia is deluding itself about its past". [[The Guardian]].
25. (17 January 2018). "Historian Beevor 'Astonished' At Ukraine Ban on Best-Selling 'Stalingrad'". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
26. (2020-05-08). "Fellows - The Society of Authors".
27. (2022-11-17). "AGM 2022 — Resolutions and next steps".
28. "Antony Beevor: 2014 Pritzker Literature Award Winner | Pritzker Military Museum & Library | Chicago". Pritzkermilitary.org.
29. "Antony Beevor {{!}} Pritzker Military Museum & Library {{!}} Chicago".
30. "Pritzker Military Museum & Library Announces 2014 Literature Award Winner - BWWBooksWorld". Broadwayworld.com.
31. "British military historian wins $100,000 prize". Boston Herald.
32. Carpenter, Caroline. (2014-06-26). "Beevor wins $100,000 Pritzker Military Prize". [[The Bookseller]].
33. (2022-04-29). "Honorary graduate archive".
34. "Honorary graduates, 2010 to 2019".
35. "Honorary Graduates - About".
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38. James, Trevor. (2016). "The Historian". The Historical Association.
39. {{London Gazette. (31 December 2016)
40. [http://www.bath.ac.uk/ceremonies/2010/summer/profiles/ Honorary Graduates] {{Webarchive. link. (29 July 2017. ''[[University of Bath]]'', 2012. Retrieved 24 January 2012.)
41. "president.ee".
42. Antony Beevor. (2014-04-24). "Antony Beevor". Penguin.com.
43. (4 November 2014). "Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction: Helen Macdonald wins with 'H is for Hawk'". The Independent.
44. "All winners of the Wolfson History Prize".
45. "Hawthornden Prize".
46. (2025-02-19). "Antony Beevor’s extraordinary biography of Rasputin to Weidenfeld & Nicolson".