BIOGRAPHY
Sir Max Hastings is an author, journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in every British national newspaper. He now writes regularly for the Daily Mail and reviews books for the Sunday Times and New York Review of Books.
He has published twenty-six books, including mst recently “The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-45” (2015); “Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914” (2013); “All Hell Let Loose” (2011); “Finest Years: Churchill As Warlord 1940-45” (2009); and “Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45” (2004). Sir Max has also published three collections of writing about the British countryside and field sports.
After dropping out of Oxford to become a journalist, he worked in the US from 1967-68 after winning a World Press Institute fellowship, an experience which inspired his first book “America 1968: The Fire This Time”, published when he was 23.
He subsequently spent most of his early years as a foreign correspondent for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard, reporting eleven conflicts, including Vietnam and the 1982 South Atlantic war, which inspired “Battle For The Falklands”, the 1983 best-seller he wrote with Simon Jenkins.
He was editor, then editor-in-chief, of The Daily Telegraph from 1986-1995, and of the Evening Standard form 1996 to 2002.
He has described his journalistic career in two memoirs, ‘Going To The Wars” (2000) and “Editor” (2002).
Sir Max has received many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Prize, Journalist Of The Year and Reporter of the Year in the 1982 British Press Awards, and Editor Of The Year in 1988.
In 2008 he received the Westminster Medal of the Royal United Services Institute for his lifetime contribution to Military Literature, and in 2009 the Edgar Wallace Trophy of the London Press Club.
In 2012 the Pritzker Military Library of Chicago presented him with its $100,000 Literary Award for lifetime achievement. In the same year he received the Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature for “All Hell Let Loose”.
MAX’S TALKS
Sir Max has an incredibly rich and deep knowledge of global history, especially of the UK and Europe.
Drawing on decades of research and award-winning work, he provides nuanced and erudite insights on contemporary issues, from Brexit and the future of the EU to Trump’s America and the rise of Asia.