Max Hastings Popular Books
Max Hastings Biography & Facts
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings (; born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist and military historian, who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, and editor of the Evening Standard. He is also the author of thirty books, most significantly histories, which have won several major awards. Hastings currently writes a bimonthly column for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes to The Times and The Sunday Times. Early life Hastings' parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar. He was educated at Charterhouse and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year. Career Hastings moved to the United States, spending a year (1967–68) as a Fellow of the World Press Institute, following which he published his first book, America, 1968: The Fire This Time, an account of the US in its tumultuous election year. He became a foreign correspondent and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC1's Twenty-Four Hours current affairs programme and for the Evening Standard in London. Hastings was the first person accompanying the British Task Force to enter Port Stanley on the last day of the 1982 Falklands War. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he returned to the Evening Standard as editor in 1996 and remained there until his retirement in 2002. Hastings was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2002 Birthday Honours for services to journalism. He was elected a member of the political dining society known as The Other Club in 1993. He has presented historical documentaries for the BBC and is the author of many books, including Bomber Command, which earned the Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction in 1980. Both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year prize. He was named Journalist of the Year and Reporter of the Year at the 1982 British Press Awards, and Editor of the Year in 1988. In 2010 he received the Royal United Services Institute's Westminster Medal for his "lifelong contribution to military literature", and the same year the Edgar Wallace Award from the London Press Club. In 2012, he was awarded the US$100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award, a lifetime achievement award for military writing, which includes an honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation. Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Historical Society. He was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England from 2002 to 2007. In his 2007 book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (known as Retribution in the United States), the chapter on Australia's role in the last year of the Pacific War was criticised by the chief of the Returned and Services League of Australia and one of the historians at the Australian War Memorial, for allegedly exaggerating discontent in the Australian Army. Dan van der Vat in The Guardian called it "even-handed", "refreshing" and "sensitive" and praised the language used. The Spectator called it "brilliant" and praised his telling of the human side of the story. Hastings wrote a column for the Daily Mail between 2002 and 2008 and often contributes articles to other publications such as The Guardian, and The Sunday Times. He also currently writes a bimonthly column for Bloomberg Opinion. Personal life Hastings lives near Hungerford, Berkshire, with his second wife, Penelope (née Levinson), whom he married in 1999. Hastings has a surviving son and daughter by his first wife, Patricia Edmondson, to whom he was married from 1972 until 1994. In 2000, his 27-year-old first son, Charles, died by suicide in Ningbo, China. He dedicated his book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944–45, which was published in 2007, to Charles's memory. Political views Hastings has at different times voted for all three major British political parties. He announced his support for the Conservative Party at the 2010 general election, having previously voted for the Labour Party at the 1997 and 2001 general elections. He said that "four terms are too many for any government" and described Gordon Brown as "wholly psychologically unfit to be Prime Minister". At elections since he has voted for the Liberal Democrats. In August 2014, Hastings was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue. In June 2019, Hastings described Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party leadership candidate, as "unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification ... [his] premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability ... If the price of Johnson proves to be Corbyn, blame will rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the British people – who will not find it funny for long." He continued along this line of argument throughout the Johnson premiership and he said that "the experiment in celebrity government to which the Conservative Party committed us has failed, and is seen by the world to have failed. The foremost task for a successor is to restore Britain's reputation as a serious country." In his Bloomberg column on 14 February 2021, Hastings wrote that the United Kingdom's future was unlikely to be long-term. He advocated a United Ireland but said he was against Scottish and Welsh independence. Hastings was widely criticised for stating in the article that the Welsh language was of "marginal value" and that Wales could not succeed as an independent country because it was "dependent on English largesse". Huw Edwards said there were several factual errors in Hastings' points, while Fergus Llewelyn Turtle responded: "For the non-English part of the UK that is ... the most integrated with England, it's pretty astonishing how many English commentators have exactly zero political clue about Wales." In March 2021, Hastings wrote that the prospect of a showdown between the United States and China over Taiwan was becoming increasingly likely. Select bibliography Reportage America 1968: The Fire this Time (Gollancz, 1969) ISBN 0-575-00234-4 Ulster 1969: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (Gollancz, 1970) ISBN 0-575-00482-7 The Battle for the Falklands (with Simon Jenkins) (Michael Joseph, 1983) ISBN 0-7181-2228-3, (Norton, 1983) ISBN 0-393-01761-3 Biography Montrose: The King's Champion (Gollancz, 1977) ISBN 0-575-02226-4 Yoni: Hero of Entebbe: Life of Yonathan Netanyahu (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980) ISBN 0-297-77565-0 Autobiography Going to the Wars (Macmillan, 2000) ISBN 0-333-77104-4 Editor: A Memoir (Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 0-333-90837-6 Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable (London, HarperPress, 2010) ISBN 978-0-00-727171-9 History Bomber Command (M.... Discover the Max Hastings popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Max Hastings books.
Best Seller Max Hastings Books of 2024
-
Lives of the Later Caesars
Anthony BirleyOne of the most controversial of all works to survive from ancient Rome, the Augustan History is our main source of information about the Roman emperors from 117 to 284 AD. Written...
-
Warriors
Max HastingsHeroism in battle has been celebrated throughout history, yet it is one of the least understood virtues. What makes some men and women perform extraordinary deeds on the battlefiel...
-
The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus & J. CohenNo gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New Wo...
-
The Eastern Front 1914-1917
Norman Stone'Without question one of the classics of postwar historical scholarship, Stone's boldly conceived and brilliantly executed book opened the eyes of a generation of young British his...
-
Forgotten Voices Of The Great War
Max ArthurIn 1960, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing WWI veterans and interviewing them at length...
-
The Second World Wars
Victor Davis HansonA "breathtakingly magisterial" account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian (Wall Street Journal)World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. N...
-
Total War
Michael JonesIn February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regim...
-
Britain Against Napoleon
Roger KnightFrom Roger Knight, established by his multiaward winning book The Pursuit of Victory as 'an authority ... none of his rivals can match' (N.A.M. Rodger), Britain Against Napoleon is...
-
Operation Pedestal
Max HastingsRenowned historian Max Hastings recreates one of the most thrilling events of World War II: Operation Pedestal, the British action to save its troops from starvation on Maltaan act...
-
Behind Enemy Lines
Richard Bath & Sir Tommy MacphersonWith three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d'honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorate...
-
Statesman of Europe
T. G. Otte'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.' The words of Sir Edward Grey, looking out from the windows of the Foreign Office at the ...
-
Sink the Belgrano
Mike RossiterOn the evening of 30 March, 1982, Commander David Hall, chief engineer of the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror received a telephone call giving him the order to 'store for w...
-
Hidden History
Gerry Docherty & James MacGregorThink you know about British history and the causes of the First World War? Think again. This fascinating and gripping study of events at the turn of the Twentieth Century is a rem...
-
Istanbul
John FreelyIstanbul's history is a catalogue of change, not least of name, yet it has managed to retain its own unique identity. John Freely captures the flavour of daily life as well as cour...
-
The Later Roman Empire
Ammianus MarcellinusAmmianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian, and his writings rank alongside those of Livy and Tacitus. The Later Roman Empire chronicles a period of twentyfive years d...
-
The Fall of Paris
Alistair HorneThe collapse of France in 1870 had an overwhelming impact – on Paris, on France and on the rest of the world. People everywhere saw Paris as the centre of Europe and the hub of cul...
-
Nazi Gold
Douglas Botting & Ian SayerIn 1945, as Allied bombers continued their final pounding of Berlin, the panicking Nazis began moving the assets of the Reichsbank south for safekeeping. Vast trainloads of gold an...
-
The Seed and the Sower
Sir Laurens van der PostWhat follows is the story of two British officers whose spirit the Japanese try to break. Yet out of all the violence and misery strange bonds are forged between prisoners and the...
-
A History of India
Romila ThaparA history of India upto 1300 AD introducing the beginnings of India's cultural dynamics
-
Down South
Chris ParryDown South by Chris Parry one man's astonishing diary of war in the Falklands'A gripping account of heroism and chaos in the South Atlantic' Mail on Sunday'Compelling, gripping...
-
Democracy in America
Alexis Tocqueville, Isaac Kramnick & Gerald BevanOne of the most influential political texts ever written on America, and an indispensable authority on the nature of democracy In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristoc...
-
A Call To Arms
Allan MallinsonThe Sunday Times bestselling author Allan Mallinson, brings us another actionpacked and stirring Matthew Hervey adventure. If you like Patrick O'Brian, Bernard Cornwell and CS Fore...
-
Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb
François-René de ChateaubriandThe most enjoyable, glamorous and gripping of all 19thcentury autobiographies a tumultuous account of France hit by wave after wave of revolutionsMemoirs from Beyond the Tomb is t...
-
Natural History
Pliny the ElderPliny's Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, ...
-
The Age of Alexander
PlutarchPlutarch's parallel biographies of the great men in Greek and Roman history are cornerstones of European literature, drawn on by writers and statesmen since the Renaissance, most n...
-
Inferno
Max HastingsFrom one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involv...
-
The Rise of the Roman Empire
Polybius & Ian Scott-KilvertThe Greek statesman Polybius (c.200–118 BC) wrote his account of the relentless growth of the Roman Empire in order to help his fellow countrymen understand how their world came to...
-
The Alexiad
Anna Komnene & E. R. A. SewterA revised edition of Anna Komnene's Alexiad, to replace our existing 1969 edition. This is the first European narrative history written by a woman an account of the reign of a Byz...
-
Dead Reckoning
Dick LehrThe definitive and dramatic account of what became known as "Operation Vengeance" the targeted kill by U.S. fighter pilots of Japan's largerthanlife military icon, Admiral Isoroku...
-
Operation Chastise
Max HastingsBest Nonfiction of 2020 Kirkus ReviewsOne of the most lauded historians of our time returns to the Second World War in this magnificent retelling of the aweinspiring raid on Germa...
-
The First Day on the Somme
Martin MiddlebrookThe soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words Guardian'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled...
-
Retribution
Max HastingsBy the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan's defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained unclear. The ensuing dramathat ended in Japan's utter...
-
The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers
David WellsWhy was the number of Hardy's taxi significant? Why does Graham's number need its own notation? How many grains of sand would fill the universe? What is the connection between the ...
-
Most Secret War
R.V. JonesReginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and ...
-
Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle For Britain
Joshua LevineDrawing material from the Imperial War Museum's extensive aural archive, Joshua Levine brings together voices from both sides of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain to give us a un...
-
Military Blunders
Saul DavidRetelling the most spectacular cockups in military history, this graphic account has a great deal to say about the psychology of military incompetence and the reasons even the most...
-
Catastrophe 1914
Max HastingsFrom the acclaimed military historian, a history of the outbreak of World War I: the dramatic stretch from the breakdown of diplomacy to the battlesthe Marne, Ypres, Tannenbergthat...
-
Trinity
Frank Close'Everything about this story is astounding' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times"Trinity" was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Trinity...
-
Winkle
Paul BeaverDiscover the daring life story and astonishing adventures of Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown Britain's greatestever pilotSmall in stature but immense in reputation and talent, there w...
-
Immediate Response
Mark Hammond2006 in Helmand saw British forces engaged in the most ferocious fighting since the Korean War. For much of the time they were hanging on by their fingertips, holed up in remote pl...
-
Korean War
Max HastingsIt was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle.Max Hastingspreeminent military historiantakes us back to the bloody b...
-
Rogue Warrior of the SAS
Martin Dillon & Roy BradfordMore than half a century after his death, Lt Col. Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the mos...
-
Ungentlemanly Warfare
Howard LinskeyA secret assassin. An impossible mission. Failure is not an option. 1943. With Nazi Germany facing defeat, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring has authorized mass production of ...
-
The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire
Ryan Gingeras'A tour de force of accessible scholarship' The Guardian'Impressive ... It is a complicated story that still reverberates, and Gingeras narrates it with lucid authority' New States...