Sir Max Hastings | |
|---|---|
 Hastings in 2013 | |
| Born | Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings (1945-12-28)28 December 1945 (age 79) Lambeth, London, England |
| Education | Charterhouse |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist,editor,author |
| Employers | |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parents |
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| Relatives | Clare Hastings (sister) |
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings (/ˈheɪstɪŋz/; born 28 December 1945)[1] is a Britishjournalist and military historian,[2] who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief ofThe Daily Telegraph, and editor of theEvening Standard. He is also the author of thirty books, most significantly histories, which have won several major awards. Hastings currently writes a bimonthly column forBloomberg Opinion and contributes toThe Times andThe Sunday Times.
Hastings' parents wereMacdonald Hastings, a journalist andcorrespondent, andAnne Scott-James, sometime editor ofHarper's Bazaar.[3] He was educated atCharterhouse andUniversity College, Oxford, which he left after a year.
Hastings moved to theUnited States, spending a year (1967–68) as a Fellow of theWorld Press Institute, following which he published his first book,America, 1968: The Fire This Time, an account of the US in itstumultuous election year. He became aforeign correspondent and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars forBBC1'sTwenty-Four Hours current affairs programme and for theEvening Standard in London.
Hastings was the first person accompanying the British Task Force to enterPort Stanley on the last day of the 1982Falklands War. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief ofThe Daily Telegraph, he returned to theEvening Standard as editor in 1996 and remained there until his retirement in 2002.[4] Hastings was appointed aKnight Bachelor in the2002 Birthday Honours for services to journalism.[5] He was elected a member of the politicaldining society known asThe Other Club in 1993.[6]
He has presented historical documentaries for the BBC and is the author of many books, includingBomber Command, which earned theSomerset Maugham Award for non-fiction in 1980. BothOverlord andThe Battle for the Falklands won theYorkshire PostBook of the Year prize. He was namedJournalist of the Year andReporter of the Year at the 1982 British Press Awards, andEditor of the Year in 1988. In 2010 he received theRoyal United Services Institute'sWestminster Medal for his "lifelong contribution to military literature", and the same year the Edgar Wallace Award from the London Press Club.[4]
In 2012, he was awarded the US$100,000Pritzker Military Library Literature Award, a lifetime achievement award for military writing, which includes an honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation.[7] Hastings is aFellow of theRoyal Society of Literature,[8] and theRoyal Historical Society. He was President of theCampaign to Protect Rural England from 2002 to 2007.
In his 2007 bookNemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (known asRetribution in the United States), the chapter onAustralia's role in the last year of thePacific War was criticised by the chief of theReturned and Services League of Australia and one of the historians at theAustralian War Memorial, for allegedly exaggerating discontent in theAustralian Army.[9]Dan van der Vat inThe Guardian called it "even-handed", "refreshing" and "sensitive" and praised the language used.[10]The Spectator called it "brilliant" and praised his telling of the human side of the story.[11]
Hastings wrote a column for theDaily Mail between 2002 and 2008 and often contributes articles to other publications such asThe Guardian, andThe Sunday Times. He also currently writes a bimonthly column forBloomberg Opinion.[12]
Hastings lives nearHungerford,Berkshire,[13] with his second wife, Penelope (née Levinson), whom he married in 1999. Hastings has a surviving son and daughter by his first wife, Patricia Edmondson, to whom he was married from 1972 until 1994.[3] In 2000, his 27-year-old first son, Charles, died bysuicide inNingbo, China.[13][14] He dedicated his bookNemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944–45, which was published in 2007, to Charles's memory.[15]
Hastings has at different times voted for all three major British political parties. He announced his support for the Conservative Party at the2010 general election, having previously voted for the Labour Party at the1997 and2001 general elections. He said that "four terms are too many for any government" and describedGordon Brown as "wholly psychologically unfit to bePrime Minister".[16]
In August 2014, Hastings was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter toThe Guardian opposingScottish independence in the run-up to September'sreferendum on that issue.[17]
In June 2019, Hastings describedBoris Johnson, theConservative Party leadership candidate, as "unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification ... [his] premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability ... If the price of Johnson proves to beCorbyn, blame will rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon theBritish people – who will not find it funny for long."[18] He continued along this line of argument throughout theJohnson premiership and he said that "the experiment in celebrity government to which the Conservative Party committed us has failed, and is seen by the world to have failed. The foremost task for a successor is to restore Britain's reputation as a serious country."[19]
In hisBloomberg column on 14 February 2021, Hastings wrote that the United Kingdom's future was unlikely to be long-term. He advocated aUnited Ireland but said he was against Scottish andWelsh independence.[20] Hastings was widely criticised for stating in the article that theWelsh language was of "marginal value" and that Wales could not succeed as an independent country because it was "dependent on English largesse".Huw Edwards said there were several factual errors in Hastings' points, while Fergus Llewelyn Turtle responded: "For the non-English part of the UK that is ... the most integrated with England, it's pretty astonishing how many English commentators have exactly zero political clue about Wales."[21]
In March 2021, Hastings wrote that the prospect of a showdown between the United States and China overTaiwan was becoming increasingly likely.[22]
In memory of my son CHARLES HASTINGS 1973–2000
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Editor ofThe Daily Telegraph 1986–1995 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Editor of theEvening Standard 1996–2002 | Succeeded by |
| Non-profit organization positions | ||
| Preceded by | President of theCampaign to Protect Rural England 2002–2007 | Succeeded by |
