Sir Antony Beevor

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2017

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is military historian, Sir Antony Beevor. His books about some of the key battles of the Second World War are best-sellers and have been credited with reinvigorating the whole genre. There was little indication of this future success while he was boarder at Winchester public school where he failed to pass either his History or his English A levels. During the five years he spent in the army, including two years at Sandhurst for officer training, he studied history under the great military historian, John Keegan. On deciding he wanted to be a writer, his first three novels had limited success, and he was encouraged by his publishers to draw on his experience of army life and turn his talents to military history. His ground-breaking work Stalingrad was based on what he discovered in the Russian military archives and won him the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize. In his book Berlin: the Downfall 1945, he wrote about the mass rapes of German women committed by the Red Army at the end of the war. He was knighted in the 2017 New Year honours list. He is married to the writer Artemis Cooper. Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.5	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:05.2	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:09.8	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio broadcast.
0:14.2	For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk- Radio 4.
0:30.7	Music
0:42.0	My cast away this week is the historian Sir Anthony Beaver.
0:45.8	He has taken books on military history from the neglected,
0:49.2	fusty shelves at the back of the shop to pride of place the top of the world's best
0:53.4	cellar lists. Marshalling his literary prowess to complete works entitled
0:57.6	Stalingrad, Ardenne, D-Day and Berlin the downfall 1945.
1:02.9	He chronicles many of the bloodiest moments mankind has endured, throwing light not just on
1:08.4	human horror and heroism, but much of the hitherto ignored struggles of ordinary soldiers
1:13.6	and forgotten citizens. His own backstory makes interesting reading and is strikingly at odds
1:19.6	with how he's made his name. He failed both his English and history A levels,
1:24.9	and as a young officer in the 11th Azaz, it was the boredom of a posting to Wales
1:30.0	that led him to begin writing. He says, one writes to understand and it's always thrilling.
1:36.3	When you're going through the archives to find something exciting or unexpected,
1:40.4	it is like panning for gold. So welcome Sir Anthony Beaver.
1:44.0	And it'll be no surprise to listeners that of course your books always take a huge
1:48.8	amount of in-depth research. Is it the researching or the writing in the end which is your greatest
1:54.8	pleasure? They're different pleasures. Enjoy both. The research is always exciting because I find
	...

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