Antony Beevor - Acceptance Speech at the 2014 Liberty Gala

Antony Beevor accepted the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing at the 2014 Liberty Gala in Chicago on November 8, 2014.

The award was presented by the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Founder and Chair, Jennifer N. Pritzker where she was joined on stage by previous award winners.

Beevor, a distinguished Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Literature and former officer of the British Army’s 11th Hussars, has published four novels and 10 books of nonfiction. He has been heralded as one of the world’s finest military historians, and his books—the most recent of which is entitled The Second World War—have sold more than six million copies in 30 languages.

Following five years with the British Army, Beevor left to pursue a career as a writer, representing the sixth generation of his family to be published in Europe. His books include: Inside the British Army; Crete—The Battle and the Resistance, which was awarded a Runciman Prize; and Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, written with his, wife Artemis Cooper. His best-selling Stalingrad, first published in 1998, won the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature; and 2009’s D-Day – The Battle for Normandy became a number-one bestseller in seven countries, including the UK and France.

Candidates for the Pritzker Literature Award are nominated each year by a committee of historians, authors, and executives, and the final selection is made by Museum & Library founder Col. Jennifer N. Pritzker. The 2014 Screening Committee is chaired by John W. Rowe and includes past Literature Award recipients Rick Atkinson, Carlo D'Este, Sir Max Hastings, and Tim O'Brien, as well as author Karl Marlantes, Chicago History Museum President Gary Johnson, and ex-officio members Kenneth Clarke and Liza Lanz.