I’ve met many important people who I wouldn’t want to spend more than half an hour with!
I became interested in the subject when…
My entry into the field was a course I did as an undergraduate, which looked at nuclear weapons and arms control, and when I was a postgraduate this became the focus of my study. The moment of revelation came when I went to Oxford in 1972, and Michael Howard was appointed as my supervisor: one of the great military historians. I read his book Studies in War and Peace (1970) in one sitting and thought: this is what I want to do.
Growing up I was fascinated by…
I was fascinated by cowboys and Indians in primary school; I read all sorts of books about Jesse James and ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok… but I grew out of that! If you grew up in the 1950s, the Second World War dominated. My dad had been in the Navy during the war, as had uncles, relations, and their friends, so there were lots of war stories around.
‘Hippy’ archaeologists