Quotes from Antony Beevor

Every country has its own perspective on the Second World War. This is not surprising when experiences and memories are so different.

It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices.

Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.

To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make.

It is this compulsion to look backwards at a time of crisis because one's got no idea of what lies ahead. There is a notion of security that somehow it must resemble the past. It's never going to. Just because we muddled through in the past doesn't mean we can automatically muddle through in the future.

The majority of soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army and the allied armies treated the local population humanely.

I get slightly obsessive about working in archives because you don't know what you're going to find. In fact, you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.

When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.

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.

Without an understanding of history, we are politically, culturally and socially impoverished. If we sacrifice history to economic pressures or to budget cuts, we will lose a part of who we are.

At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector.

There are one or two very good women military historians who use imagination, great study and research; they can put themselves in the boots of the soldier.

The great help of being in the Army is to understand why are the armies clever in what they describe as emotional intelligence, making soldiers come to terms with the death of comrades by certain rituals.

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 greatest heroes of the Normandy battlefield were the unarmed medics, whom snipers often shot at despite their Red Cross armbands.

I believe passionately in preemptive pessimism, especially before a book comes out. I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales, and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.

The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.

I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.

Some novelists want to give people in history a voice because they have been denied it in the past.

I can't envisage stopping writing.

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

I used to write in a room overlooking the valley from where I could see too much, whether checking the sheep and alpacas or seeing the trout rise on the lake.