FINANCIAL TIMES FEBRUARY 12/FEBRUARY 13 2011 ★ HOUSE & HOME 3
At home
Y ou don’t mind if I smoke?” asksthe historian Antony Beevor, ashe leads me up the stairs of hishome to his first-floor office. “Igave up for a while but I find it
helps with my writing. I try to wait untilmy 11 o’clock coffee before my first ciga-rette of the day.”
It’s a damp Monday morning at the hand-some three-storey, late-Victorian terracedhouse near Parsons Green, south-west Lon-don, where Beevor, 64, lives with his wife,the biographer Artemis Cooper, who’s justhurrying out of the door. “I bought thehouse after leaving the army in 1970, andshared it with friends, before marryingArtemis in 1986,” says Beevor.
The author’s sales – including his “trian-gle of second world war books” (acclaimedhistories of the D-Day campaign, and thebattles for Stalingrad and Berlin) – are“fast approaching the 4.5m mark”, he noteswith quiet satisfaction. Sales of Stalingrad(1998) alone stand at around 2m.
Books are scattered in the kitchen, onthe landing and in the office. “It goes withthe territory,” observes Beevor, with a puffon his cigarette. “Besides, I’m currentlyworking on a new history of the 1939-1945war – a terrifyingly large project, far biggerthan anything I’ve ever done, which lookslike it’s going to be around 900 pages long –so I need to make sure I’ve got the rightbooks to hand.”
The historian, who’s dressed casually inan olive green jumper and faded jeans, addswryly: “My wife thinks the publisher shouldgive a roll of Tubigrip [a wrist-support band-age] away with the book.” This is a refer-ence to the fact that, at 300,000 words, it isguaranteed to be hefty.
The house has a comfortable, lived-inlook. Beevor, his wife and two children –one of whom is at university, the otherstudying for A-levels – divide their timebetween London and a 300-year-old homein Kent.
Yellow curtains frame the windows ofthe ground floor drawing room. This space,with its family heirlooms, antiques fromaround the world and ancestral portraitsagainst pale blue wallpaper, is the moststriking. But the real life of the houserevolves around the kitchen, where Beevormakes me a coffee, and the “his and hers”offices on the first-floor.
“I’ve only ever known one couple whowere able to share an office. But we workjust down the corridor from each other, soif one of us is going to get a coffee . . . ”
Beevor, whose father was a British armyofficer, went to one of the country’s mostexclusive schools, Winchester. He joined
the military and served in the 11th Hus-sars, a cavalry regiment based in Germany.
His five-year tenure was largely unevent-ful. He made senior lieutenant but never gotto see action. The highlight of his time inthe services was being taught by the mili-tary historian John Keegan at Sandhurst,the British army’s officer training college.
“He was a very stimulating teacher –constantly challenging ideas – but thegreatest debt I owe him is the idea of look-ing at war from the bottom up rather thanthe top down,” says Beevor. “Earlier gener-ations of writers have tended to describewarfare as a game of chess, rather thantaking into account all the chaos and thefear, and this greatly influenced me.”
After leaving the army, he wrote acritically acclaimed history of the Spanishcivil war (1982). However, it was his storyof the epic clash at Stalingrad – arguablythe second world war’s turning point – thatmade his name as a military historian.
Four years later came Berlin: The Down-fall 1945, another critical and commercialsuccess – although his recounting of themass rapes committed by the Red Armyin Germany sparked controversy in Russia.
In the war roomThe bestselling military historian and author of ‘Stalingrad’, Antony Beevor, invites York Membery into his headquarters
Bookish Antony Beevor in his study at his home near Parsons Green, southwest London, which he bought in 1970 Daniel Jones
“Perhaps I should have predicted therow,” says Beevor. “As the Russian ambas-sador pointed out to me, ‘You’ve got tounderstand – the victory [over Germany] issacred.’ Having said that, as a historian, Icouldn’t ignore what happened either.”
So why the fascination with the secondworld war in particular? “It defined theperiod that I grew up in,” Beevor observes.“Moreover, as we move into a post-militaryera, the young increasingly have no idea ofwhat totalitarian warfare was like – sincewe’re living in a ‘health and safety’environment where there is very little needto make moral choices, as there were atthat time.”
But that is only part of his motivation forwriting a new history of the conflict. “Ithink there’s room for a book that showsthe interrelationship between the differenttheatres of the war – a lot of books havefocused on either the war in Europe, or theFar East. There’s a need to look at thewider jigsaw.”
His wife calls upstairs and asks him tohelp park her car; that’s one of the prob-lems about living in Victorian-era streets:parking space is at a premium.
“Where was I?” asks Beevor on hisreturn, before going on to argue that it’smore important than ever for the world –and its leaders – to understand the realnature of the conflict as it recedes in time.
“It is so often used as the benchmark forany other war and this is terribly mislead-ing – for instance, with Bush comparing 9/11to Pearl Harbor,” he says. “Politicians makevery artificial and inaccurate parallels,partly because they want to sound Churchil-lian, which is extremely dangerous.
“Take Afghanistan, where history hasshown that foreign intervention is justabout the only thing that unites the coun-try. It’s terribly important that world lead-ers know about the past if we’re to avoidsomeone like Tony Blair making parallelsbetween Saddam Hussein and Hitler, thesame mistake that [Anthony] Eden madewith Nasser at Suez – along with Iraq, ourbiggest post-war foreign policy blunder.”
Beevor looks at his watch. He hasgot 200,000 words to write if he’s tomeet his deadline, and has to get backto work.
As I prepare to leave, I ask when he willstart to take life easier, given his success.
“Stop writing?” he frowns. “Much asI love to relax by doing a bit of gardening,and taking some fairly energetic walks,which you need to do when you spend asmuch time as I do sitting at a desk,I couldn’t possibly stop writing. Books aremy life.”
MY FAVOURITE THINGS
Ancestral keepsakesThe historian is veryfond of a portraitof his grandmother,Lina Waterfield, whichhangs in the sittingroom. “She was aformidable grande
dame who hadlittle time forchildren,”he says. “Irememberher onlytoo well. This oilsketch by Derek Hillwas done in Italy in1956 and captures hervery well.”
He is also proud of amagnificent northGerman marquetrydesk in walnut datingback to the 18thcentury, pictured left.
“It has been in thefamily for a long time,and was used by fiveancestors to write
theirbooks,”
he says.Finally, there is
“the strangelybeautiful” hand
made in gilded lead– a paperweight –which fascinated himas a child, above.
“It was a presentfrom the greatFrench philosopherVictor Cousin to mygreatgreatgrandmother, LucieDuff Gordon, justbefore his deathin 1867,” he says.“Sadly, I have no ideaof its significance.”
FEBRUARY 12 2011 Section:Weekend Time: 9/2/2011 - 15:36 User: raikess Page Name: RES3, Part,Page,Edition: RES, 3, 1
