Max Hastings

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Sir
Max Hastings
FRSL FRHistS
Max Hastings at the Financial Times 125th Anniversary Party, London, in June 2013
Born
Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings

(1945-12-28) 28 December 1945 (age 78)
Lambeth, London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationCharterhouse School
Alma materUniversity College, Oxford
Occupation(s)Journalist, editor, author
Employer(s)BBC
Evening Standard
The Daily Telegraph
Spouses
  • Patricia Edmondson
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1972; div. 1994)​
  • Penelope Levinson
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1999)​
Children3 (1 deceased)
Parents
RelativesClare Hastings (sister)

Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings FRSL FRHistS (/ˈheɪstɪŋz/; born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist and military historian, 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.

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.[2] Hastings was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2002 Birthday Honours for services to journalism.[3] He was elected a member of the political dining society known as The Other Club in 1993.[4]

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.[2]

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.[5] 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.[6] Dan van der Vat in The Guardian called it "even-handed", "refreshing" and "sensitive" and praised the language used.[7] The Spectator called it "brilliant" and praised his telling of the human side of the story.[8]

Hastings wrote 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 near Hungerford, Berkshire[9] 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.[9][10] 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".[11]

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.[12]

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." [13]

Select bibliography

Books

Reportage

  • America 1968: The Fire this Time (Gollancz, 1969) ISBN 0-575-00234-4
  • Ulster 1969: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (Gollancz, 1970) ISBN 0-575-00482-7
  • The Battle for the Falklands (with Simon Jenkins) (W W Norton, 1983) ISBN 0-393-01761-3, (Michael Joseph, 1983) ISBN 0-7181-2228-3

Biography

Autobiography

History

Countryside writing

Anthology

Journalism

Filmography

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Hastings, Sir Max (Macdonald), (born 28 Dec. 1945), author and journalist". Who's Who. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.19444.
  2. ^ a b "Biography". Max Hastings. 18 January 2013. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
  3. ^ "No. 56595". The London Gazette (Supplement). 15 June 2002. p. 1.
  4. ^ Lloyd, John (29 July 1997). "Secret members of the Other Club". The Times. p. 13.
  5. ^ "Britain's Max Hastings wins $100K military writing prize". CBC News. 19 June 2012.
  6. ^ Walker, Frank (2 December 2007). "Mutinous jibe angers veterans". The Age. Retrieved 3 December 2007.
  7. ^ van der Vat, Dan (13 October 2007). "Review: Nemesis by Max Hastings". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
  8. ^ Howard, Michael (3 October 2007). "The worst of friends". The Spectator. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
  9. ^ a b Grice, Elizabeth (30 September 2011). "What makes military historian Max Hastings keep on writing about the Second World War?". ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  10. ^ Staff, Guardian (26 May 2000). "Son of Evening Standard editor dies in China". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  11. ^ Hastings, Max (11 April 2010). "My vote". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  12. ^ "Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories". The Guardian. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
  13. ^ I was Boris Johnson's boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister The Guardian. June 24 2019. Retrieved June 24 2019.
  14. ^ Steele, Jonathan (22 September 2018). "Vietnam by Max Hastings review – an effort to exonerate the US military". the Guardian.

External links

Media offices
Preceded by Editor of The Daily Telegraph
1986–1995 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Editor of the Evening Standard
1996–2002 		Succeeded by
Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England
2002–2007 		Succeeded by
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