John Keegan

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Sir John Keegan (born 1934) is an English military historian.

Keegan was born in Clapham, the son of Irish Catholics. He was educated at Wimbledon College for two years, then entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1953. He worked at the American Embassy in London for two years. In 1960 he was appointed to a lectureship at Sandhurst, a post he held for 26 years. In 1986 he moved to the Daily Telegraph to take up the post of Defence Correspondent. In 1998 he wrote and presented the BBC's Reith Lectures, entitled War and Our World. He was knighted in 2000.

Keegan was a senior lecturer of military history at the Royal Military Academy, and also had worked at Princeton University and Vassar College.Back cover of The First World War, by John Keegan. ISBN 0375400524

Frank C. Mahncke, a US defense analyst writing for the Naval War College, says of Keegan, "He is among the most prominent and widely read military historians of the late twentieth century."[link].

Keegan is admired for his ability to go beyond the traditional content of military history in search of a deeper understanding of war. His works treat the experience of the individual soldier, the historical causes of military events, the role of technological change in warfare, and the choices and dilemmas faced by military leaders.

Despite being a military historian and lecturer, Keegan, due to childhood illness, has himself never been in the military or seen combat, an irony he discusses in the introduction of a number of his works.

Books

Barbarossa: Invasion of Russia, 1941 (New York, 1971) ISBN 0345021118
The Face of Battle (London, 1976) ISBN 00670304328
Six Armies in Normandy (1982) ISBN 0140052933
The Mask of Command (London, 1987) ISBN 0712665269
The Price of Admiralty (1988) ISBN 0091737710
Who Was Who In World War II (1978) ISBN 0853681821
The Second World War (Viking Press, 1990) ISBN 0670823597
A History of Warfare (London, 1993) ISBN 0679730826
The Battle for History: Refighting World War Two (Vintage), 1996) ISBN 0679767436
Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America (1997) ISBN 0679746641
War and Our World: The Reith Lectures 1998 (London: Pimlico, 1999) ISBN 0375705201
The Book of War (ed.) (Viking Press, 1999) ISBN 0670888044
The First World War (New York: Knopf, 1999) ISBN 0375400524
Winston Churchill (2002) ISBN 0670030791
Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (2003) ISBN 0375400532
The Iraq War (2004) ISBN 0091800188

Endnotes

Reference

Snowman, Daniel "John Keegan" page 28–30 from History Today, Volume 50, Issue # 5, May 2000.

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