WHATBOOK..? ANTONY BEEVOR

Historian

... are you reading now?

MAX HASTINGS’S Vietnam. I was longing to read it as I had heard from American historians that he was researching it like a man possessed: it was part of his youth as a young war correspondent flying in ‘Huey’ helicopters over the rice paddies. Thank goodness it really is the great work of history we had all expected. Hastings takes the story back to the disastrous French determination to seize back their Indochinese colony at the end of World War II. The British, French and Dutch colonies in Asia had been humiliated by the Japanese conquest of their territories. This provoked a new sense of nationalism and every foreign occupation of Indochina was resisted, first by the Viet Minh, and later by its successor, the Viet Cong. U.S. politicians and commanders were no more clear-sighted and equally inflexible. And the greatest victims were, of course, the Vietnamese crushed in the middle.

... would you take to a desert island?

WHATEVER I chose on Desert Island Discs, I now know I should have gone entirely for high-quality comfort reading. Having suddenly remembered how I cowered under the bedclothes in a South Atlantic winter nearly 30 years ago listening to Pride And Prejudice, I finally realise it would also be the perfect escape from the boredom of a Pacific atoll. The joy of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s crashing tumbrilisms being turned against her, of Wickham’s perfidy uncovered and the gradual revelation that Darcy is a good sort after all never ceases to revive one’s faith in human nature.

... gave you the reading bug?

C. S. FORESTER’S The Happy Return. Not only did I return to it happily for early teenage comfort reading, but I attempted to work through the whole of Hornblower’s career from start to finish. I am not sure I would have been gripped at that age by the Jack Aubrey novels of Patrick O’Brian. They would have been a bit too sophisticated for me then, and they never appealed to me quite as much later because Aubrey was so confident. What I liked about Horatio Hornblower as a character was his self-doubt and surprising weaknesses, such as his seasickness and social unease. I have always been grateful for the pleasure it triggered.

... left you cold?

EMILY BRONTE’S Wuthering Heights. I hated the place, I hated the shouting and overthe-top emotions, in fact, I felt no sympathy for any of the characters. I also hated the bleak and windswept countryside, which was even worse than Thomas Hardy’s Egdon Heath, and that really is saying something. All in all, the book struck me as tragi-porn, and the product of an obsessive and very unhappy mind, which is perhaps no surprise when reading of the Brontes’ family life.

ANTONY BEEVOR will be discussing Arnhem: The Battle For The Bridges, 1944, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on october 6.