Friday, June 27, 2014

Beevor wins $100,000 Pritzker Military Prize


British historian and author Antony Beevor has won the $100,000 2014 Pritzker Military Museum and Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

Last year’s recipient, Tim O’Brien, revealed via the Pritzker Military Museum and Library website that Beevor will receive the $100,000 (£58,865) award, along with a medallion and citation, at the Museum and Library’s annual gala in Chicago on 8th November.

The award’s Screening Committee chairman, John W Rowe, said: “The committee was unanimous in recommending Antony Beevor as this year’s recipient. Mr Beevor is at the height of his powers as a military historian, and he is a wonderful representative of the tradition the Museum and Library has established with the previous recipients.”

The Pritzker Literature Award recognises the contributions of a living author for a body of work dedicated to enriching the understanding of military history. Previous recipients include James McPherson, Rick Atkinson and Max Hastings. It is sponsored by Chicago’s Tawani Foundation.

Beevor is a distinguished Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Literature and former officer of the British Army’s 11th Hussars. He has published four novels and 10 books of non-fiction, the most recent of which is The Second World War (Phoenix). His book Stalingrad (Penguin), first published in 1998, won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature.

Beevor said: "Winning this award is, for me, the greatest honour imaginable—partly because of the reputation of the prize, but also because on the panel of judges are some of the historians that I admire most in the world.”

He added: “It may be for lifetime achievement, which has a retrospective air in some ways, but I think the wonderful idea is that it is the greatest carrot imaginable to push you forward and keep you writing.”

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