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
ages dated head practice punishment shaving
The punishment of shaving a woman's head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the Dark Ages with the Visigoths.
allied armies local majority officers population treated
The majority of soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army and the allied armies treated the local population humanely.
conspiracy covers false legends religious theories
Counter-knowledge covers the propagation of false legends and conspiracy theories often used for political purposes or fundamentalist religious propaganda.
absorb changed dwell enormity ethnic lives national overlook second tendency war ways
When we dwell on the enormity of the Second World War and its victims, we try to absorb all those statistics of national and ethnic tragedy. But, as a result, there is a tendency to overlook the way the war changed even the survivors' lives in ways impossible to predict.
army beginning fighting german group june ongoing preparing reaching red secretly troops vast war
At the beginning of June 1944, the war was reaching a climax. German troops had been brutalised by the savagery of the ongoing fighting in Russia, where the Red Army was secretly preparing its vast encirclement of the Germans' Army Group Centre.
blend epic fact forms since starting various
A blend of fact and fiction has been used in various forms since the dawn of creative writing, starting with sagas and epic poems.
backwards compulsion crisis future lies mean muddled notion resemble security somehow time
It is this compulsion to look backwards at a time of crisis because one's got no idea of what lies ahead. There is a notion of security that somehow it must resemble the past. It's never going to. Just because we muddled through in the past doesn't mean we can automatically muddle through in the future.
bad consciousness fiction good historical immense power shaping
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
Alpacas are very endearing, and they all have very different personalities.
behaved confused danger face forced great major moral question second understand unspoken war
It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices.
british country empire forming history links national respect teaching understand unlikely
Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.
understanding duty historian
The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.
believe historical
I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.
mother jobs writing
It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother's family.