The vital thing for me is to integrate the history from above with the history from below because only in that way can you show the true consequences of the decisions of Hitler or Stalin or whomever on the ordinary civilians caught up in the battle.

I was planning to stay in the Army all my life, but I ended up being posted to a training camp in Wales and was so bored there, I wrote a novel.

I was in Estonia when a professor asked me if I was aware that making any criticism of the Red Army during the war was now an imprisonable offence. I was quite shaken.

Antony Beevor Quotes