Max Hastings

Sir Max Hastings FRSL FRHistS
Max Hastings at the Financial Times 125th Anniversary Party, London, in June 2013
Born	Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings 28 December 1945 Lambeth, London, England
Residence	Hungerford, Berkshire, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Charterhouse School University College, Oxford
Occupation	Journalist, editor; historian, author
Height	6 ft 5 in (1.96 m)
Parent(s)	Macdonald Hastings Anne Scott-James

Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS (/ˈheɪstɪŋz/; born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.

Life and career

Insignia of Knight Bachelor

Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year. Whilst most of his immediate family were educated at Stonyhurst, it was his cousin Sir Stephen Hastings who became his abiding ally.^[1] He then 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 BBC TV's Twenty-Four Hours current affairs programme and for the Evening Standard in London. Hastings was the first journalist to enter the liberated Port Stanley during 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 until his retirement in 2002.^[2] He received a knighthood in 2002. He was elected a member of the political dining society known as The Other Club in 1993.^[3]

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.^[2]

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.^[4]

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 2002–2007.

In his 2007 book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (also 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 during this period.^[5] Dan van der Vat in The Guardian called it "even-handed", "refreshing" and "sensitive", and praised the language used.^[6] The Spectator called it "brilliant" and praised his telling of the human side of the story.^[7]

Hastings writes a column for the Daily Mail and often contributes articles to other publications such as The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The New York Review of Books.

He lives at Hungerford in West Berkshire with his second wife Penny (née Levinson). Hastings has a surviving son and daughter by his first wife, Patricia Edmondson (divorced 1994). In 2000, his 27-year-old elder son Charles took his own life at Ningbo in China. He dedicated his book Nemesis: The Battle For Japan 1944–45 to his son's memory.

Political views

Hastings has supported both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. 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 claimed that "four terms are too many for any government" and described Gordon Brown as "wholly psychologically unfit to be Prime Minister".^[8] 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.^[9]

Select bibliography

Books

• America, 1968: The Fire This Time (Gollancz, 1969) ISBN 0-575-00234-4
• Ulster 1969: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (Gollancz, 1970) ISBN 0-575-00482-7
• Montrose: The King's Champion (Gollancz, 1977) ISBN 0-575-02226-4
• Bomber Command (Michael Joseph, 1979) ISBN 0-7181-1603-8
• Battle of Britain by Len Deighton, Max Hastings (Jonathan Cape, 1980) ISBN 0-224-01826-4
• Yoni — Hero of Entebbe: Life of Yonathan Netanyahu (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980) ISBN 0-297-77565-0
• Das Reich: Resistance and the March of the Second SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Michael Joseph, 1981) ISBN 0-7181-2074-4
• Das Reich: March of the Second SS Panzer Division Through France (Henry Holt & Co, 1982) ISBN 0-03-057059-X
• The Battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins (W W Norton, 1983) ISBN 0-393-01761-3, (Michael Joseph, 1983) ISBN 0-7181-2228-3
• Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (Simon & Schuster, 1984) ISBN 0-671-46029-3
• The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1985) ISBN 0-19-214107-4
• Victory in Europe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985) ISBN 0-297-78650-4
• The Korean War (Michael Joseph, 1987) ISBN 0-7181-2068-X, (Simon & Schuster, 1987) ISBN 0-671-52823-8
• Outside Days (Michael Joseph, 1989) ISBN 0-7181-3330-7
• Victory in Europe: D-Day to V-E Day (Little Brown & C, 1992) ISBN 0-316-81334-6
• Scattered Shots (Macmillan, 1999) ISBN 0-333-77103-6
• Going to the Wars (Macmillan, 2000) ISBN 0-333-77104-4
• Editor: A Memoir (Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 0-333-90837-6
• Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (Macmillan, 2004) ISBN 0-333-90836-8
• Warriors: Exceptional Tales from the Battlefield (HarperPress [UK], 2005) ISBN 978-0-00-719756-9
• Country Fair (HarperCollins, October 2005) ISBN 0-00-719886-8. 288 pp
• Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (HarperPress [UK], October 2007) ISBN 0-00-721982-2 (re-titled Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 for US release Knopf ISBN 978-0-307-26351-3)
• Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord, 1940–45. London, HarperPress, 2009. ISBN 978-0-00-726367-7 (re-titled Winston's War: Churchill, 1940–1945 for US release by Knopf, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-26839-6)
• Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable. London, HarperPress, 2010. ISBN 978-0-00-727171-9
• All Hell Let Loose: The World At War, 1939–1945. London, HarperPress, 29 September 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-733809-2 (re-titled Inferno: The World At War, 1939–1945 for US release by Knopf, 1 November 2011, ISBN 978-0-307-27359-8. 729 pp)
• Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. London, Knopf Press, Release Date 24 September 2013, ISBN 978-0307597052, 640 pp.
• The Secret War: Spies, Codes And Guerrillas, 1939-45. London: William Collins, 2015. ISBN 9780007503742

Journalism

• "The Tory defence policy will be simple: cut, brutally". The Spectator 312 (9464): 14–15. 16 January 2010. Retrieved 3 November 2010.

Filmography

• Wellington Bomber, 2010 BBC documentary

See also

• Clan Macdonald of Sleat

References

1. "- Person Page 668". thepeerage.com.
2. "Biography". Max Hastings. 2013-01-18. Retrieved 2014-08-25.
3. Lloyd, John (29 July 1997). "Secret members of the Other Club". The Times. p. 13.
4. "Britain's Max Hastings wins $100K military writing prize". CBC News. 19 June 2012.
5. Frank Walker (2 December 2007). "Mutinous jibe angers veterans". The Age. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
6. van der Vat, Dan (13 October 2007). "Review: Nemesis by Max Hastings". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
7. Howard, Michael (3 October 2007). "The worst of friends". The Spectator. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
8. "My vote". guardian.co.uk. 11 April 2010.
9. "Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories | Politics". theguardian.com. 2014-08-07. Retrieved 2014-08-25.

External links

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Max Hastings at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Max Hastings in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• The Daily Mail archive of Hastings' writing; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Max Hastings on Journalisted
• Profile, debretts.com; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Archive of Hastings' articles, The Guardian; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Interview re "Editor: A Memoir", guardian.co.uk; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Profile, pritzkermilitary.org; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Interview on Inferno, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, 16 November 2011; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Winston's War, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, 17 March 2010; accessed 2 April 2014.
• Interview on Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, 1 May 2008; accessed 2 April 2014
• Interview on Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945], Pritzker Military Museum & Library, 30 November 2004; accessed 2 April 2014.