Hew Strachan
Award-winning author, historian and military strategist Hew Strachan is the recipient of the 2016 Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
One of the world’s foremost scholars of 19th Century military history and World War One, Strachan will formally accept the award November 5 at the Museum & Library's 2016 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.
Author of 14 major publications, including the first installment of his groundbreaking three-volume work on the Great War The First World War (To Arms,) Strachan is known for his incredibly detailed and carefully researched writings. His research interests center on the military history and strategic studies, with particular interest in the First World War and the history of the British Army. Strachan continuously expands the traditional narrow narrative beyond the trenches of the Western Front to consider the conflict's global implications, a method particularly resonant in our increasingly globalized society.
He has been significantly involved in the preparations for the centenary of the First World War, serving on the UK and Scotland national advisory committees and on the Comité Scientifique of the Mission du Centenaire in France. Strachan served as chair of Imperial War Museum’s academic advisory committee for its new First World War galleries and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s 2014-18 committee.
"Military history has been important to me ever since my childhood. So, to say that I chose to write and then chose to write about military history would actually be to get the sequence the wrong way around. For me, the military history came first and the writing came second. I became a writer precisely because I wanted to be a military historian."
—Hew Strachan on becoming a military historian and writer.
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 Jennifer N. Pritzker. The 2016 Screening Committee is chaired by John W. Rowe and includes past Literature Award recipients Antony Beevor, David Hackett Fischer, Tim O'Brien; Colby Award Winner Karl Marlantes; Executive Director of the 1st Divison Museum at Cantigny Paul Herbert; President & CEO of the Chicago History Museum, Gary Johnson, and ex-officio members Kenneth Clarke and Brad Ballast.
HEW STRACHAN is a graduate of Cambridge University, Professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, a Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College of Cambridge, and a Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College of Oxford University.
As a respected and renowned expert in military history, Strachan serves as an advisor on contemporary military affairs in the United Kingdom. He is a member of the Chief of Defense Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel, the Defense Academy Advisory Board and has been a specialist advisor to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the National Security Strategy. His services to the Ministry of Defense earned him a knighthood in 2013.
