Alistair Horne

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Sir Alistair Allan Horne (born November 9, 1925) is a British historian of modern France. He is the son of Sir James Horne and Lady Auriol Horne (formerly Auriol Hay).

As a boy during World War II, he was sent to live in the United States. He attended Millbrook School, where he befriended William F. Buckley, Jr., who remains a life-long friend. Horne served in the RAF in 1943–44 and with the Coldstream Guards from 1944–1947. After the war he served as aide to Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. He worked as a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from 1952–1955. He is an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

Horne is also the biographer of his friend, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Currently, he is working on an official biography of Henry Kissinger.[1]. As a result of the Iraq War, his 1977 book A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 became widely sought after by American military officers beginning in 2003. It was recommended to U.S. President George W. Bush by former United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. In October, 2006 the book was republished [2] and in January of 2007, by phone from his home in England, Alistair Horne was part of an Iraq War discussion panel on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS.

[edit] Work

Return to Power: A Report on the New Germany. New York: Praeger, 1956.
The Land is Bright. 1958.
Canada and the Canadians. Toronto: Macmillan, 1961.
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1962.
The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870-1. London: Macmillan, 1965.
To Lose a Battle: France 1940. London, Macmillan, 1969.
Death of a Generation Neuve Chapelle to Verdun and the Somme 1970
The Terrible Year: The Paris Commune, 1871. London, Macmillan, 1971.
Small Earthquake in Chile: A Visit to Allende's South America. London: Macmillan, 1972.
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. London: Macmillan, 1977.
Napoleon, Master of Europe 1805-1807. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979.
The French Army and Politics, 1870-1970. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1984.
Harold Macmillan. New York: Viking Press, 1988.
A Bundle from Britain. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Montgomery, David (co-author). Monty: The Lonely Leader, 1944-1945. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
How Far from Austerlitz?: Napoleon, 1805-1815. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Horne, A. (ed.).Telling Lives: From W.B. Yeats to Bruce Chatwin. London: Papermac, 2000.
Seven Ages of Paris. London: Macmillan, 2002.
The Age of Napoleon. New York: Modern Library, 2004.
La Belle France: A Short History. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

[edit] Quotes

(speaking of aerial combat in World War I) "Never since the Middle Ages and the invention of the longbow had the battlefields of Europe seen this kind of single combat. When the champions of either side met to fight spectacular duels in and out of the clouds, the rest of the war seemed forgotten; even the man in the trenches paused to watch, as the hosts of Greece and Troy stood by when Hector and Achilles fought." From The Price of Glory