96 Quotes by Antony Beevor

To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make

The smell of roasted flesh permeated the air for hours afterwards with the stench of oily-black smoke from the blazing vehicles . Gräbner's body was never identified among all the other carbonized corpses.

It is only when one faces death, observed one of the men there, that one realises the great value of life.

Meanwhile the 7th Armoured Division had charged ahead to cut off Tobruk. Two Australian brigades hurried on from Bardia to complete the siege. Tobruk also surrendered, offering up another 25,000 prisoners, 208 guns, eighty-seven armoured vehicles and fourteen Italian army prostitutes who were sent back to a convent in Alexandria where they languished miserably for the rest of the war.

A Dutchman stepped out of his house and asked two British Soldiers if they would like a cup of tea. A little further back along the route they had come, the bodies of British paratroopers lay 'everywhere, many of them behind trees or poles', Albert Horstman of the Arnhem underground recorded. He then saw 'a man about middle-aged, who wore a hat. This man went to every dead soldier, lifted his hat and stood in silence for a few seconds.

Sé practico: regala un ataúd

A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians.

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

Many historians, with an ‘if only’ approach to the British defeat, have focused so much on different aspects of Operation Market Garden which went wrong that they have tended to overlook the central element. It was quite simply a very bad plan right from the start and right from the top. Every other problem stemmed from that.