Mr. Antony Beevor is a professional historian with many appearances in documentaries, not only on the second world war, and quite a few publications. It doesn´t come as a surprise to me that he dislikes the so-called “war movies based on true events”.

He´s the author of on epic and concise book on WW II, “The Second World War”, packed to the brim with both individual stories about single persons and comtemplations of the events from a wide perspective. It was very interesting to read. His attempt to give an unbiased account and to show different viewpoints is a complete success.

Considering Mr. Beevor´s Age, he may well have met People who actually fought in the war, so some of his stuff is probably first hand. So, having to watch historical inaccuracies may quite well and even more lead to dental problems.

The other book of his I own is on the Spanish Civil War. Unfortunately I can´t remember the title. Anyway, I had read Orwell´s “Hommage to Catalonia” and as this is from a very left-wing angle (although Orwell is always keen on unbiased historical accuracy) I wanted to complete my knowledge with an opus from a historian. It was good. I wonder what Mr. Beevor thinks of movies and books from that era, for instance “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.

Both books I can recommend as being highly informative and greatly enjoyable.

I fully agree with @torros in his second post: History is so interesting in itself, one doesn´t have to make up stories and just base the plot on the great events. On the other hand a war movie is not a documentary, so we can take such movies as what they are, entertainment and not history lessons.

I for one like both.

Btw, thank you very much for posting this, @torros . Where I live it is hard to get British newspapers at all, and I do not like to read newspapers online. In the case of newspapers I like the smell and feel of paper.