Antony Beevor Quotes

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.

I was in Estonia when a professor asked me if I was aware that making any criticism of the Red Army during the war was now an imprisonable offence. I was quite shaken.

The punishment of shaving a woman's head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the Dark Ages with the Visigoths.

At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector.

I read round the subject, I make a skeleton outline, and then I start work in the relevant archives. During the marshaling of the material, I copy the material from each archive file across to the relevant chapter in the skeleton outline.

I think one of the great disasters (in military history) is the way that the Second World War has become the defining reference point for every crisis and every conflict.

When I was a child I had something called Perthes' Disease which meant I was on crutches, so I was bullied at school and all that sort of stuff.

Restorers of paintings and pottery follow a code of conduct in their work to distinguish the original material from what they are adding later.

The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.

Of course history is easily manipulated - though that makes it even more important for us to know what actually happened.

I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.

I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.

The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime.

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.

The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.

When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.

Politicians are often tempted to deploy history as a weapon against each other.

School-leavers unfortunately will come away thinking the First World War consisted simply of 'going over the top' on the Western Front to slaughter in no-man's-land, when the conflict extended so much further, to the collapse of four empires and numerous civil wars.

I joined the Army in 1965 and served with the 11th Hussars, which I loved. The regiment was so relaxed - a salute was more like a friendly wave.

I just write the sort of book that I would enjoy reading myself, a book that is both scholarly and recreates the experience of people at that time.

I was planning to stay in the Army all my life, but I ended up being posted to a training camp in Wales and was so bored there, I wrote a novel.

Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.

I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis

I used to write in a room overlooking the valley from where I could see too much, whether checking the sheep and alpacas or seeing the trout rise on the lake.

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.

The vital thing for me is to integrate the history from above with the history from below because only in that way can you show the true consequences of the decisions of Hitler or Stalin or whomever on the ordinary civilians caught up in the battle.

History is never tidy.

To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make

I love 'Blackadder,' but history it certainly ain't.

Entertainment history is now the main source of supposedly historical knowledge for more and more people, but 'histo-tainment' is superficial and lacks all context.

In the Iraq war, for instance, so much of the information is digitized and can easily be wiped out. That will make it very hard to write accurate histories. Also, there's a much greater opportunity for suppression of information before it can even be archived.

The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. 'You are under military law,' ran the forceful reminder, 'and you are still subject to punishment. Don't speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don't speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.'
One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled 'Notes for Those Going on Leave.' Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. 'You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the

In my library/study/barn, there is a Ping-Pong table on which I can pile working books and spread maps.

Some novelists want to give people in history a voice because they have been denied it in the past.

The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have.

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.

Counter-knowledge covers the propagation of false legends and conspiracy theories often used for political purposes or fundamentalist religious propaganda.

This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.

The greatest heroes of the Normandy battlefield were the unarmed medics, whom snipers often shot at despite their Red Cross armbands.

I get slightly obsessive about working in archives because you don't know what you're going to find. In fact, you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.

Without an understanding of history, we are politically, culturally and socially impoverished. If we sacrifice history to economic pressures or to budget cuts, we will lose a part of who we are.

One has this image of the Soviet state and the Red Army as being extremely disciplined but in the first four months of 1945 their soldiers were completely out of control.

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.

The memory of the Second World War hangs over Europe, an inescapable and irresistible point of reference. Historical parallels are usually misleading and dangerous.

When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it.

If you smash a city when you're trying to capture it, you actually end up providing the perfect terrain for the defenders while blocking the access for your own armoured vehicles.