A distinguished military historian who writes like a gifted novelist, Antony Beevor has accrued an impressive array of awards and honours during his scintillating career. A former officer with the 11th Hussars cavalry regiment, Beevor served in Germany and England before devoting himself to writing some the most compelling and evocative histories of the Second World War and more broadly, of the Twentieth century) to be published in recent times.

His most famous works; Stalingrad (which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature) and Berlin – the Downfall (which won the first Longman-History Today Trustees’ Award), portray the massive struggles between fascism, communism and liberty in terms of the moving and human stories of ordinary combatants, without ever losing sight of the bigger picture, of what was really at stake for all us. Disliking the triumphalism of ‘victory’ history, he brings out the flaws and weaknesses – the bouts of spite and vengeance – that bitter warfare often brings out in ordinary soldiers, as well as their evident heroism and altruism.

Most recently, his D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (published in May 2009) became a Number 1 bestseller in Britain, France and three other European countries. He has been likened to Tolstoy, creating literary masterpieces out of the history of our times, although his craftsmanship as a great story-teller never compromises his scrupulous attention to the facts. Today, he combines writing with a visiting professorship at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London.