Antony Beevor

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

“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 reason that 'Stalingrad' took off was because it emphasized the influence of history on the individual.”

“When I started to write, I realised that you need a bit of both: the overall context as well as the individual's experience.”

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

“The temptation in any approaching crisis or conflict is, because people haven't got a clue what lies ahead, they're always searching into the past for some sort of pattern ... to galvanise the nation or their supporters and put themselves on a pedestal to sound Churchillian or Rooseveltian.”

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

“There are one or two very good women military historians who use imagination, great study and research; they can put themselves in the boots of the soldier.”

“It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices.”

“The great help of being in the Army is to understand why are the armies clever in what they describe as emotional intelligence, making soldiers come to terms with the death of comrades by certain rituals.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”