96 Quotes by Antony Beevor

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

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

I read round the subject, I make a skeleton outline, and then I start work in the relevant archives. During the marshaling of the material, I copy the material from each archive file across to the relevant chapter in the skeleton outline.

Entertainment history is now the main source of supposedly historical knowledge for more and more people, but 'histo-tainment' is superficial and lacks all context.

I have come across both inspiring teachers of history and deplorable ones over the years, so one cannot generalise, except perhaps to observe that the profession seems to encourage anti-militarist sentiments.

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.

It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother's family.

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.

The memory of the Second World War hangs over Europe, an inescapable and irresistible point of reference. Historical parallels are usually misleading and dangerous.