Antony Beevor

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

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 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. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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

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

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 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. ”

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. ”