Nigel Hamilton
Nigel Hamilton
Nigel Hamiltonis an award-winning British-born biographer, academic and broadcaster, whose works have been translated into sixteen languages. In the United States he is known primarily for his best-selling work on the young John F. Kennedy, JFK: Reckless Youth, which was made into an ABC miniseries. In the United Kingdom, he is known for Monty, a three-volume official life of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, the World War II Field Marshal which won both the 1981 Whitbread Award and the Templer Medal...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth16 February 1944
bush democratic george lead learned memoirs sufficient system
What George W. Bush learned in his pre-presidential years - and what he omits in his new memoirs - was not how to lead a nation, but how, with sufficient toughness, to cheat the democratic system to get elected.
access artful colleagues determination learn lessons life listening stories terms time understanding
Listening to the stories my colleagues are researching and grappling with - in terms of access to documents, psychological understanding of their subjects, artful composition and determination to extrapolate from an individual's life lessons and insights that we can all learn from - I am each time overwhelmed by joy.
both knew outrage public stories twelve
In daring to re-tell the stories of the last twelve American presidents, both public and private, I knew I would incur some outrage with 'American Caesars.'
aspiring belong lifeline meet practicing
In my case, I belong to a group of aspiring and practicing biographers in Boston. We meet once a month for a coupla hours. It's become my lifeline - forgive the pun.
both bush george jfk privileged sons thus travel wealthy
Both JFK and George W. Bush were the sons of wealthy U.S. ambassadors and thus privileged to meet distinguished figures, to travel, and to see the world and think about its problems if they chose.
beat bill boom clinton focusing george history house longest president sustained time victory white
Bill Clinton beat Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, for the White House in 1992 by focusing on 'the economy, stupid' - and Clinton's victory led, in time, to the longest sustained boom in American history.
bombing house orders public recording watergate
The White House tapes, recording Nixon's nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.
approach collateral damage leadership moral prisoners solution surely though time tough ways
The moral was, in time of anarchy, tough leadership is the only solution - even though the collateral damage may be heartbreaking. Mrs. Thatcher's strident, take-no prisoners approach was in some ways repugnant, but it was surely necessary.
ford naval officer quarter served
President Gerald Ford was no intellectual, but he had served with distinction in combat as a naval gunnery officer and then as Congressman for a quarter century.
carter ford iran jimmy taken whom
President Ford was taken for a ride by his predecessor, whom he unpardonably pardoned; Jimmy Carter was also taken for a ride, but by his successor, Ronald Reagan, over the return of the Iran hostages.
adversity armed chief commander facing fdr forces great greatest heroic history human overcome polio president reins war
The story of FDR as U.S. Commander in Chief is a heroic war story of a president who had already overcome great adversity in facing polio but who went on to take the reins of our armed forces in the greatest conflagration in human history - on our behalf.
america atlantic august charter committed great keeps nation obama roosevelt since upheld uphold word
Since his inauguration in 2009, President Obama has upheld FDR's vision of America as a nation that keeps its word - a nation still committed to uphold the 'four freedoms' that President Roosevelt set down in the great Atlantic Charter of August 1941.
army british general mad risen
My father had risen in the British Army under the revolutionary aegis of General Montgomery, who was mad about training for battle, not muddling into disaster.
almost fitzgerald gotten highly jfk joseph kennedy portrait publishing reckless trouble twenty
In publishing 'JFK: Reckless Youth' almost twenty years ago, I had gotten into trouble myself with the Kennedys. Not because of my portrait of JFK - which was highly laudatory - but because I had described his parents, Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, in less-than-flattering terms.