1999 - The Winner
STALINGRAD
Antony Beevor (Penguin), £12.99
STALINGRAD is a remarkable account of one
of the bloodiest sieges in history. The titanic struggle
between Hitler and Stalin was the first major modern battle
fought in a city, with thousands of helpless citizens caught
up in its horrors. Beevor concentrates, not on the
strategy of the conflict, but on the experience of the soldiers
on both sides. He uses original research including the private
diaries and letters of soldiers and interviews with key witnesses
and participants, to create a tour de force of military
history.
Both a commercial and a critical success, STALINGRAD has
been hailed as:
‘A magnificent winter tapestry…it
reads like an accessible novel rather then the superb history
book which it really is.’ Dirk Bogarde
‘As good a piece of war history as I have ever read’ Jeremy
Paxman
‘This superb work of narrative history’ Antonia
Fraser
‘A brilliantly researched tour de force’ Sarah
Bradford
Antony Beevor was educated at Winchester
and Sandhurst. After five years in the army, he resigned
his commission and went to live in Paris, where he wrote
his first novel. His works of non-fiction include The
Spanish Civil War, Inside the British Army and Crete – The
Battle and the Resistance, which won a Runciman Prize
in 1992. He is married to the writer Artemis Cooper,
with whom he wrote Paris after the Liberation,
1944-1949. They were each made Chevalier de l’Ordre
des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Antony Beevor lives in London.
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