John Keegan
 John Keegan       ( historian, journalist) | ||||||||||||||
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| Born | John Desmond Patrick Keegan 15 May 1934 Clapham, London, England | |||||||||||||
| Died | 2 August 2012 (Age 78) | |||||||||||||
| Nationality | UK | |||||||||||||
| Alma mater | • King's College (Taunton) • Wimbledon College • Balliol College Oxford | |||||||||||||
| Religion |  Catholic | |||||||||||||
| Spouse | Susanne Everett | |||||||||||||
| Interests | •  World War II•  war | |||||||||||||
Spooky UK historian who attended the 1988 Bilderberg
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Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan was a spooky UK journalist and Official Narrative military historian. In 1986 he became The Daily Telegraph's Defence Editor,[1] in 1988 he attended a Bilderberg meeting.
Contents
Background
Keegan was born in Clapham, London, on 15 May 1934. His father was an Irish First World War veteran. Keegan was evacuated to Somerset when the Second World War broke out.[2] At age 13 Keegan contracted orthopaedic tuberculosis, which affected his gait. The long-term effects of this rendered him unfit for military service, and the timing of his birth made him too young for service in the war, facts he mentioned in his works as an ironic observation on his profession and interests. The illness also interrupted his education in his teenage years.[3]
Education
He studied for a period at King's College, Taunton, and for two years at Wimbledon College, which led to entry to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1953, where he read history with an emphasis on war theory.
Career
After graduation he worked at the American Embassy in London for three years.[4]
In 1960 Keegan took up a lectureship in military history at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which trains officers for the British Army. He remained there for 26 years, becoming a senior lecturer in military history during his tenure, during which he also held a visiting professorship at Princeton University and was Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar College in the United States.[5]
Leaving the academy in 1986,[6] Keegan joined The Daily Telegraph as a defence correspondent and stayed with the paper as defence editor until his death. He attended the 1988 Bilderberg meeting.
He also wrote for the American conservative publication National Review Online. In 1998 he wrote and presented the BBC's Reith Lectures, entitling them "War in Our World".
He wrote a hagiographic Official Narrative biography of Winston Churchill. "Churchill, the master British statesman, stood alone against fascism and renewed the world's faith in the superiority of democracy."[7] Other books written by Keegan are: The Iraq War, Intelligence in War, The First World War, The Second World War, The Battle for History, The Face of Battle, War and Our World, The Mask of Command, and Fields of Battle.
Keegan died on 2 August 2012 of natural causes at his home in Kilmington, Wiltshire. He was survived by his wife, their two daughters and two sons.[8]
He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Historical Society.
Views on contemporary conflicts
- Keegan stated: "I will never oppose the Vietnam War. Americans were right to do it. I think they fought it in the wrong way. I don't think it's a war like fighting Hitler, but I think it was a right war, a correct war."[9]
- When the Falklands conflict broke out in 1983, Keegan was at a conference in Israel. Confronted by a television reporter he was at first pessimistic about the chances of the Task Force. But on returning home he started to write under the pseudonym Patrick Desmond in The Spectator. This work did much to counter calls in the early weeks from other writers for the operation to be abandoned.[10]
- He supported the 1991 Gulf War. This was recognised by an OBE in 1991.[10]
- Keegan believed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 showed that air power alone could win wars.[11][12]
- An article in The Christian Science Monitor called Keegan a "staunch supporter" of the 2003 Iraq War. It quotes him: "Uncomfortable as the 'spectacle of raw military force' is, he concludes that the Iraq war represents 'a better guide to what needs to be done to secure the safety of our world than any amount of law-making or treaty-writing can offer." [13][14]
Event Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1988 | 3 June 1988 | 5 June 1988 | Austria Interalpen-Hotel Telfs-Buchen | The 36th meeting, 114 participants |
References
- ↑ https://www.nndb.com/people/860/000159383/
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/05/sir-john-keegan
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20151109141752/http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/56542-1/John+Keegan.aspx
- ↑ Daniel Snowman: John Keegan History Today, volume 50, issue 5. 2000.
- ↑ Back cover of The First World War. Keegan, John
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20151109141752/http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/56542-1/John+Keegan.aspx
- ↑ https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/britain/winston-churchill.html
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/05/sir-john-keegan
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/books/sir-john-keegan-historian-who-put-a-face-on-war-dies-at-78.html
- ↑ a b https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/9447744/Sir-John-Keegan.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170712132352/http://www18.georgetown.edu/data/people/dlb32/publication-31936.pdf
- ↑ https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/22/why-milosevic-yielded/
- ↑ https://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0608/p15s01-bogn.html
- ↑ https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/10/10/21-days-to-baghdad/
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