Name Ronald Lewin | Education University of Oxford | |
Died January 6, 1984, Surrey, United Kingdom Books Ultra Goes to War, Rommel As Military Commander, Slim: The Standardbearer, The life and death of the Afri, Montgomery as military commander | ||
George Ronald Lewin CBE (11 October 1914 – 6 January 1984), later known as Ronald Lewin, was a British officer, publishing editor, radio producer and military historian.
Contents
Education
Lewin attended University of Oxford at The Queens College on an academic scholarship in 1932, having earned both the Hastings Scholar award and the Goldsmiths’ Exhibitioner award in Classics and Divinity. While there he earned double First honours in classical literature, history and philosophy. His love of English literature endured throughout his life.
Career
Following his graduation in 1937 Lewin worked as an editorial assistant with the British publishing house of Jonathan Cape Limited. With the start of the Second World War in 1939 he joined the British Army, serving as an officer in the Royal Artillery. In North Africa he served under Montgomery, and was wounded at El Alamein. He returned to his field post and served with distinction in North Africa and Europe till the close of the war.
Returning to England in 1946 he worked in the BBC Home service, initially as a producer. He was made chief of the BBC's domestic service in 1957, and remained at that position until his retirement from the BBC in 1965. In 1966 he returned to publishing, and was made editor at Hutchinson Publishing. He served in that capacity till 1969.
Military historian
Lewin did not begin writing books until the age of 54. He wrote nine books during his lifetime and was working on a one-volume history of World War II at the time of his death. His best-known book was Ultra Goes to War, an account written on the cipher breaking by which the Allies intercepted and broke the coded messages that the Germans transmitted by radio during World War II. His work on Ultra was the first to be based on official documents of the intelligence operation.
Writing in a forward to a book by Lewin, historian Max Hastings said "He quickly established a reputation as one of the major military writers of his generation." He went on to say "His biography of Slim was outstanding. His assessments of Churchill, Montgomery and Rommel at war are essential reading for students of the period." Lewin's biography of William Slim, titled Slim the Standard-Bearer, received the WH Smith Literary Award.
Lewin's biography Rommel as Military Commander (1968) has been described by the University of Salford's historian Alaric Searle as "uncritical and effusive", a part of the tradition that cemented the Rommel legend, a view that the Field Marshal was an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of the Third Reich due to his (now disputed) participation in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler. The historian Patrick Major states that the work focused on the military career of Rommel, depoliticising it and presenting him strictly as a soldier. In another work on the North African campaign, the 1977 The Life and Death of the Africa Korps, Lewin wrote that it was "possible and necessary to assert that (...) the purity of the desert purified the desert war", contributing to the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
Awards
Lewin was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1977 and of the Royal Historical Society in 1980. He was awarded the Chesney Gold Medal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies in 1982.