Antony Beevor

Antony James Beevor (born December 14 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 has published several popular histories on the Second World War and 20th century in general.

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, granddaughter of Lady Diana Cooper.

His best known works, the bestselling Stalingrad and Berlin - The Downfall 1945 recount the WWII battles between Russia and Germany. They have been praised for their vivid, compelling style, and the use of newly disclosed documents from Soviet archives.[1] [2] [3] Another one of his best known works is Crete: The Battle and the Resistance for which he won the Runciman award, administered by the Anglo-Hellenic League for stimulating interest in Greek history and culture.

Berlin - The Downfall 1945 has encountered criticism in Russia.[4] The Russian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies" and "slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism."[5] O.A. Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association of WWII Historians, has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of neo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes". [6]

This criticism centres on the book's discussion of atrocities committed by the Red Army against German civilians - in particular, extremely widespread rape of German women and also female Russian forced labourers, both before and after the end of the war. While this has been widely discussed outside Russia (for example, A Woman in Berlin), it remains controversial. In particular, the controversy reflects both a reluctance in Germany to consider Germans themselves as victims (see here) and in Russia to examine the actions of the Red Army in WWII (manifested, for example, in the controversy over a memorial to Russian soldiers in Estonia).

He has had four novels published:

• Violent Brink, (first published John Murray, London, 1975);
• The Faustian Pact, (Jonathan Cape, London, 1983);
• For Reasons of State, (Jonathan Cape London, 1980);
• The enchantment of Christina von Retzen (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1989).

His works of published non-fiction include:

• The Spanish Civil War (first published Orbis, London, 1982);
• Inside the British Army (Chatto Windus, London, 1990);
• Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (John Murray, London,1991);
• Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, co-authored with his wife, Artemis Cooper(1994);
• Stalingrad (Viking, London, 1998)
• Berlin:The Downfall 1945 (Penguin, London,2002); Published as The Fall of Berlin 1945 in the U.S.
• The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, (2004). (See Olga Chekhova)
• The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-39, Spanish edition 2005, UK edition 2006

The books he has edited include:

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

He has also been 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)

Crete: The Battle and the Resistance

Runciman Prize

Stalingrad

Samuel Johnson Prize

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

• Official website with a list of his published books and some extracts.
• Biography of Antony Beevor
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives: Beevor, Antony (b 1946)
• Antony Beevor Stalingrad Berlin - The Downfall 1945