Max Hastings | |
|---|---|
 Max Hastings at the Financial Times 125th Anniversary Party, London, in June 2013 | |
| Born | Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings 28 December 1945 |
| Residence | Hungerford, Berkshire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Charterhouse School |
| Alma mater | University College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Journalist, editor, author |
| Employer | BBC Evening Standard The Daily Telegraph |
| Height | 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) |
| |
| Children | 3 (1 deceased) |
| Parents |
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| Relatives | Clare Hastings (sister) |
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings FRSL FRHistS (; born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist, who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, and editor of the Evening Standard. He is also the author of numerous books, chiefly on defence matters, which have won several major awards.
Early life
Hastings' parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.[1] He was educated at Charterhouse and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year. Whilst most of his immediate family were educated at Stonyhurst College, it was his cousin Sir Stephen Hastings who became his abiding ally.[2][failed verification]
Career
Hastings 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 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.[3] Hastings was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2002 Birthday Honours for services to journalism.[4] He was elected a member of the political dining society known as The Other Club in 1993.[5]
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.[3]
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.[6] 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 (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.[7]Dan van der Vat in The Guardian called it "even-handed", "refreshing" and "sensitive" and praised the language used.[8]The Spectator called it "brilliant" and praised his telling of the human side of the story.[9]
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.
Personal life
Hastings lives in Hungerford with his second wife, Penelope (née Levinson), whom he married in 1999. Hastings has a surviving son and daughter by his first wife, Patricia Edmondson, to whom he was married from 1972 until 1994.[1] In 2000, his 27-year-old first son, Charles, took his own life at Ningbo in China.[10][11] 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".[12]
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.[13]
In June 2019, Hastings described the Conservative Party leadership candidate Boris Johnson as "unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification...[his] premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability...If the price of Johnson proves to be Corbyn, blame will rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the British people - who will not find it funny for long." [14]
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)
- Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division through France, June 1944 (2 ed.). Minneapolis USA: Zenith Press. 2013 [1981]. ISBN 978-0-7603-4491-0.
- 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
- Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975. William Collins, 2018.[15]
Journalism
- Hastings, Max (16 January 2010). "The Tory defence policy will be simple: cut, brutally". The Spectator. Retrieved 2010.
Filmography
- Wellington Bomber, 2010 BBC documentary
See also
References
- ^ a b "Hastings, Sir Max (Macdonald), (born 28 Dec. 1945), author and journalist". Who's Who. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.19444.
- ^ "- Person Page 668". thepeerage.com.
- ^ a b "Biography". Max Hastings. 18 January 2013. Retrieved 2014.
- ^ "No. 56595". The London Gazette (Supplement). 15 June 2002. p. 1.
- ^ Lloyd, John (29 July 1997). "Secret members of the Other Club". The Times. p. 13.
- ^ "Britain's Max Hastings wins $100K military writing prize". CBC News. 19 June 2012.
- ^ Walker, Frank (2 December 2007). "Mutinous jibe angers veterans". The Age. Retrieved 2007.
- ^ van der Vat, Dan (13 October 2007). "Review: Nemesis by Max Hastings". The Guardian. Retrieved 2014.
- ^ Howard, Michael (3 October 2007). "The worst of friends". The Spectator. Retrieved 2014.
- ^ Grice, Elizabeth (30 September 2011). "What makes military historian Max Hastings keep on writing about the Second World War?". ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2019.
- ^ Staff, Guardian (26 May 2000). "Son of Evening Standard editor dies in China". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019.
- ^ Hastings, Max (11 April 2010). "My vote". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018.
- ^ "Celebrities' open letter to Scotland - full text and list of signatories". The Guardian. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 2014.
- ^ I was Boris Johnson's boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister The Guardian. June 24 2019. Retrieved June 24 2019.
- ^ Steele, Jonathan (22 September 2018). "Vietnam by Max Hastings review - an effort to exonerate the US military". the Guardian.
External links
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Max Hastings on IMDb
- 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.
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Bill Deedes |
Editor of The Daily Telegraph 1986-1995 |
Succeeded by Charles Moore |
| Preceded by Stewart Steven |
Editor of the Evening Standard 1996-2002 |
Succeeded by Veronica Wadley |
| Non-profit organization positions | ||
| Preceded by Prunella Scales |
President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England 2002-2007 |
Succeeded by Bill Bryson |
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