Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor (born on December 14 1946) is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst and 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.

Overview

He is a Visiting Professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, 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. ^* ^* ^* His books discuss atrocities committed by both sides, but are especially notable for extensive coverage of the less-studied crimes committed by the Soviet Red Army in occupied German territory, including looting and the rape of several million women.

Criticism

Berlin - The Downfall 1945 has encountered strong criticism in Russia, where WWII is considered the "Great Patriotic War."^* The Russian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies" and "slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism."^* O.A. Rzhevsky, 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." ^*

Published works

He has had four novels published:

Violent Brink, (first published John Murray, London, 1975);
The Faustian Pact, (Jonathan Cape, London1983);
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)