Max Hastings Audiobooks

Thirty books of history behind him, Max Hastings takes on the whole war in Vietnam

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Who is Max Hastings?

Sir Max Hastings, born in 1945, is a British journalist and military historian with the sort of career that scarcely exists any more: foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, editor of the Evening Standard, and author of thirty books – most of them histories, several of them winners of major awards. He still writes a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes to The Times and The Sunday Times.

What sets Hastings apart among military historians is the reporter’s training underneath the scholarship. He came to history through journalism rather than the seminar room, and it shows in his priorities: clarity, pace and an instinct for the human detail that makes vast events comprehensible.

Max Hastings in audiobooks

Big-canvas military history is a genre the audiobook has quietly rescued: volumes of this scale can sit unread on shelves for years, but they get finished in headphones. Vietnam, the Hastings title in our catalogue, is exactly that sort of undertaking – a full-dress history from a writer with thirty books behind him and a correspondent’s eye for what actually matters on the ground.

For UK listeners, Hastings offers military history in a register the British still do particularly well: authoritative without pomposity, unsparing without cynicism. It asks for a serious commitment of hours and repays every one of them.