Other names Sir Alistair Horne Name Alistair Horne | Role Journalist Education Millbrook School | |
 | ||
Born 9 November 1925 (age 98) ( 1925-11-09 ) London Books A Savage War of Peace: Al, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1, Seven Ages of Paris, To Lose a Battle, The Fall Of Paris | ||
The first howard gotlieb lecture featuring lord asa briggs and sir alistair horne
Sir Alistair Allan Horne (9 November 1925 – 25 May 2017) was a British journalist, biographer and historian of Europe, especially of 19th and 20th century France. He wrote more than 20 books on travel, history, and biography.
Contents
- The first howard gotlieb lecture featuring lord asa briggs and sir alistair horne
- Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan Part II
- Early life military service and education
- Personal life
- Career
- Selected works
- Honours and awards
- References
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan: Part II
Early life, military service, and education
Horne was born on 9 November 1925. He was the only son of Sir Allan Horne (died 1944) and Auriol (née Hay-Drummond), niece of the 13th Earl of Kinnoull. He was educated at Eastacre, then Ludgrove School when it was at Cockfosters and described Ludgrove as a place of "humbug, snobbery and rampant, unchecked bullying" which he thought was intended to toughen the boys up. He seems to have hated Stowe, which he escaped from to America during wartime.
As a boy during World War II, Horne was sent to live in the United States. He attended Millbrook School, where he befriended William F. Buckley, Jr., who remained a lifelong friend. Horne served in the RAF in 1943–44 and later as an officer in the Coldstream Guards from 1944 to 1947. He graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge as a Master of Arts (MA) and in 1993 received the degree of LittD from the University of Cambridge.
Personal life
He married, first, in 1953, Renira Hawkins, the daughter of Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hawkins, and had three daughters. The marriage was dissolved, and in 1987 he married, secondly, Sheelin Lorraine Ryan, an artist and former wife of Hon Simon Eccles. He lived with his wife Sheelin at Turville, Oxfordshire.
Career
Horne worked as a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from 1952 to 1955. He was the official biographer of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a work originally published (in two volumes) in 1988. Horne was an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a cricket enthusiast. The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 received the Hawthornden Prize in 1963.
Horne's 1977 book A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 received the Wolfson Prize in 1978. Following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 came to be of much interest to American military officers, having been recommended to U.S. President George W. Bush by Kissinger. In October 2006 the book was republished and in January 2007, by phone from his home in England, Horne was invited to take part in an Iraq War discussion panel on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS. It was reported, in the 2 July 2007 edition of the Washington Post, that Horne met with President Bush sometime in mid-2007 at the administration's request." He described his visit in a Daily Telegraph article.
In 2004, Horne was offered the authorship of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's official biography but declined due to the daunting amount of work involved and his age, he opted instead to write a volume on one year in Kissinger's life (Kissinger: 1973, The Crucial Year, 2009).