Nigel Hamilton | |
|---|---|
 Nigel Hamilton in 2008 | |
| Born | (1944-02-16)16 February 1944 (age 81) Alnmouth, Northumberland, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Non-fiction author, academic, broadcaster |
| Nationality | British, American |
| Period | 1968–present |
| Genre | Biography, art of life writing,Military history,American presidency,German literature,Topography |
| Children | Alexander, Sebastian, Nick and Christian |
Nigel Hamilton (born 16 February 1944) is a British-born biographer,academic, andbroadcaster, whose works have been translated into sixteen languages. In theUnited States, he is known primarily for his best-selling[1] work on the youngJohn F. Kennedy,JFK: Reckless Youth, which was made into anABC miniseries. In theUnited Kingdom, he is known forMonty, a three-volume official life ofField MarshalThe 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, a senior military commander inWorld War II, which won both the1981 Whitbread Award and the Templer Medal for Military History.
He has also written about the lives ofThomas Mann and formerPresidentBill Clinton as well as numerous other works in a variety of fields. His film on the life of Field Marshal Lord Montgomery won the New York Blue Ribbon Award for Best Documentary. He founded the British Institute of Biography and became the first professor of biography in the UK atDe Montfort University. He is currently senior fellow at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies,University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he wrote a modern version ofThe Twelve Caesars, titledAmerican Caesars: Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, published in September 2010 byYale University Press.
Hamilton was born inAlnmouth, Northumberland, but spent his early life inLondon, where his father,Lt-ColonelSir Denis Hamilton, a distinguishedWorld War II battalion commander in theDuke of Wellington's Regiment, became a pioneering editor ofThe Sunday Times, chairman and editor-in-chief ofThe Times, chairman ofReuters, and trustee of theBritish Museum andBritish Library.[2] Hamilton was educated atWestminster School with his twin brother Adrian, who later became a prominent British journalist for the LondonObserver,Times andIndependent.
He then attendedMunich University andTrinity College, Cambridge, where he received an honours degree in history and a master's degree. Subsequently, he trained underAndré Deutsch andDiana Athill as a book publisher at André Deutsch Publishers. After leaving Deutsch, he taught at a school inGreenwich, where he assisted in reviving the historic borough on theRiver Thames. Hamilton opened a bookstore and began writing with his mother, Olive Hamilton, the first history of Greenwich in nearly a century,Royal Greenwich. He wrote several more guide books and edited the arts page in a London newspaper.
After moving toSuffolk, Hamilton published his first major biography in 1978,The Brothers Mann, recording the lives of the German novelistsHeinrich andThomas Mann which received high praise in Britain and the United States[3] and was translated into several languages.
In 1981, Hamilton published the first volume of his official life ofField MarshalThe 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein,Monty: The Making of a General, 1887–1942, which established Hamilton's international reputation as amilitary historian and biographer. This work was followed byMonty: Master of the Battlefield, 1942–1944, andMonty: The Field Marshal, 1944–1976.The Making of a General won theWhitbread Award for Biography in 1981,[4] and the Templer Medal for Best Contribution to Military History in 1986.[5]
Working with Robin Whitby, a Cambridge colleague, in 1987, Hamilton founded Biografia Publishers and The Biography Bookshop inCovent Garden inCentral London to promote the field of biography.
In 1988, Hamilton moved to the United States to undertake a book on the life of formerPresidentJohn F. Kennedy and he was named the John F. Kennedy Scholar at theUniversity of Massachusetts, Boston, and a visiting professor of history.[6] The first volume of his biography was published byRandom House in the autumn of 1992 asJFK: Reckless Youth.The New York Times Book Review welcomed it as "rich, gripping... a book not only about a remarkable young John F. Kennedy but also about American democracy’s own still reckless age."[7] It became aNew York Times bestseller and film rights were sold to Hearst Entertainment,[8] who turned it into a television mini-series,JFK: Reckless Youth, which starredPatrick Dempsey as the young Kennedy.[9] The book was intended to be the first of a three-volume series on Kennedy, but following its publication, Hamilton "lost access to critical primary source documents and was forced to abandon the series."[10]
In 1994, Hamilton moved back to the UK, where he became visiting professor of history atRoyal Holloway, University of London, and Professor of Biography atDe Montfort University, in Leicester.[11] He set up the British Institute of Biography[12] and led Royal Holloway's bid to create the first public and academic centre for biography in Britain, the Biorama Project.[13]
Hamilton again returned to the United States to undertake a two-volume biographical work on the life of former president,Bill Clinton. The first volume was published asBill Clinton: An American Journey in 2003 while the second volume,Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency (taking Clinton's life up to 1996), followed in 2007. Both were lauded in the press and received outstanding reviews.[14][15]
Having become senior fellow at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies[16] and a visiting scholar at bothGeorgetown University andGeorge Washington University in 2005, Hamilton returned to his first love, the study of the art of biography. He publishedBiography: A Brief History in 2007, to high acclaim fromThe New York Times[17] and followed in 2008 withHow To Do Biography: A Primer, based on his many years of teaching and life writing, which received additional praise for Hamilton's work on the art of biography.[18]
Hamilton followed with a modern version of the classic history of the great emperors ofRome,The Twelve Caesars, written early in the second century A.D. by the biographer and historianSuetonius. Published by Yale University Press in September 2010,American Caesars records the lives of the last twelve American presidents, fromFranklin Delano Roosevelt toGeorge W. Bush, and is Hamilton's most ambitious work to date.[19]
Hamilton also reviews books forThe Boston Sunday Globe,[20]The Journal of Military History and theLondon Review of Books, among others. He has had op-ed pieces and articles inThe New York Times,The Independent of London, and theTimes Higher Education, among others. Hamilton has contributed to dozens of television documentary programmes and lectures at many universities around the world on his work.
Hamilton was married to Hannelore Pfeifer, a doctoral student ofGerman literature atMunich University, and had two children, Alexander and Sebastian. Following her death in 1973, Hamilton married Outi Palovesi in 1976 and together, they had two more children, Nick and Christian. In 2005, the marriage was dissolved and Hamilton married his third wife, Raynel Shepard, in 2006. Shepard is a curriculum developer inESL for theBoston Public Schools and a university lecturer in education. Nigel Hamilton is a United States citizen.
