Ask the Author: Peter Hart
Answered Questions (12)
Peter Hart
Different Peter Hart - he was Canadian and he's dead!
Peter Hart
oops sorry only just found this! A year too late! Pete
Peter Hart
Unlikely - the quote comes from Charles Hufton who was in the 1/6th Sherwood Foresters. So close by but different battalion. It is a fairly common name. Pete
Peter Hart
I believe it is coming out with Oxford University Press on 2 March 3018. Cheers,
Peter
Peter
Peter Hart
As the IWM oral historian I travel up and down the country all the time recording interviews for the Sound Archive. In the 1980s that was Great War interviews, but now I am doing modern soldiers - Northern Ireland, the Cold War, Afghanistan and Iraq. In my research for books I do use the massive resources of the IWM more than anything else, but I do try and trawl other sources - mainly via books and the internet. I have not for instance been to American or Australian libraries. I can't afford it!
Peter
Peter
Peter Hart
Hi Leila,
I have written two books on Gallipoli and find it the most fascinating of all the Great War campaigns - but also mad, stupid and incredibly wasteful of lives given the minimal chances of success. I have always wanted to write on Mesopotamia, but there has ever been a 'right' time. Still perhaps in the future!
Peter
I have written two books on Gallipoli and find it the most fascinating of all the Great War campaigns - but also mad, stupid and incredibly wasteful of lives given the minimal chances of success. I have always wanted to write on Mesopotamia, but there has ever been a 'right' time. Still perhaps in the future!
Peter
Peter Hart
A great deal of attention is paid to the opening moves made in wars. This is particularly evident with the Great War. Much of the media interest during the recent centenary celebrations was taken up with an exhaustive coverage of the 1914 campaigns, with British attention focused almost entirely on the Battle of Mons. The treatment of the rest of the war has concentrated on the Allied defeat at Gallipoli, or the long drawn out tragedies of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele battles. There is also an obsession with the brilliance displayed by Germans in their tactical conduct of the Spring 1918 offensives. The result of such fixations is that the ultimate Allied victory a few months later must come as a real surprise as – ‘suddenly’ – the war is all over in November 1918. I wanted to explain what happened in the last few months of the war. From where exactly did the Allied victory emerge? Was the German Army really beaten? What haven’t we been told in many of the conventional accounts of the war?
Peter Hart
History is such an interesting subject. You get caught up in a topic, seeking to understand what was going on and then suddenly you want to tell other people - and so you begin to write.
Peter Hart
The Last Battle is going through the proofing stage. I should be doing that not this!
Peter Hart
Don't procrastinate before starting on a book. If you want to write on a topic then get on with it! Don't wait for the perfect moment or the 'gap in the market' - just get on with it NOW! The sooner you start the sooner you'll finish!
Peter Hart
The tremendous feeling of satisfaction in telling a great story, trying to explain what's really going on and reading good reviews that show people have appreciated the book.
Peter Hart
I don't really suffer from it as a non-fiction author. The personal experience accounts are all out there, it is just a matter of finding the best, placing them in context and presenting it with a smooth flowing linking text. Laziness is more of a problem for me!
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