Antony Beevor

Widely regarded as one of the top military writers in the world, Beevor will officially receive the award November 8 at the Museum & Library's 2014 Liberty Gala, where he will be honored for an impressive body of work dedicated to enriching the understanding of military history. Sponsored by Tawani Foundation, the Pritzker Literature Award includes a citation, medallion, and $100,000 honorarium. 

Beevor, a distinguished Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Literature and former officer of the British Army’s 11th Hussars, has published four novels and 10 books of nonfiction. He has been heralded as one of the world’s finest military historians, and his books—the most recent of which is entitled The Second World War—have sold more than six million copies in 30 languages.

Following five years with the British Army, Beevor left to pursue a career as a writer, representing the sixth generation of his family to be published in Europe. His books include: Inside the British Army; Crete—The Battle and the Resistance, which was awarded a Runciman Prize; and Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, written with his, wife Artemis Cooper. His best-selling Stalingrad, first published in 1998, won the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature; and 2009’s D-Day – The Battle for Normandy became a number-one bestseller in seven countries, including the UK and France.

Winning this award is, for me, the greatest honor 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. 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. —Antony Beevor

Candidates for the Pritzker Literature Award are nominated each year by a committee of historians, authors, and executives, and the final selection is made by Museum & Library founder Col. Jennifer N. Pritzker. The 2014 Screening Committee is chaired by John W. Rowe and includes past Literature Award recipients Rick Atkinson, Carlo D'Este, Sir Max Hastings, and Tim O'Brien, as well as author Karl Marlantes, Chicago History Museum President Gary Johnson, and ex-officio members Kenneth Clarke and Liza Lanz.

Antony Beevor, FRSL was educated at Winchester College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. For his contributions to history, literature, and the arts, he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1997, and in 2008 was awarded the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana by the President of Estonia. He was elected a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society of Literature in 1999, and Chairman of the Society of Authors in 2003. He served as the 2002-2003 Lees-Knowles lecturer at the University of Cambridge and as a Visiting Professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London, as well as the University of Kent. In December of 2016, Beevor was knighted in the New Year's Honours 2017 list for "services in support of Armed Forces Professional Development." 

He lives in London with his wife, the writer and biographer Artemis Cooper. They have two children: Nella, 24, who is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Oxford, and Adam, 21, who has just completed his finals in History at the University of East Anglia.