14 Facts About John Keegan

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan was an English military historian, lecturer, author and journalist.

John Keegan wrote many published works on the nature of combat between prehistory and the 21st century, covering land, air, maritime, intelligence warfare and the psychology of battle.

At the age of 13, John Keegan contracted orthopaedic tuberculosis, which subsequently affected his gait.

In 1960 John Keegan took up a lectureship in military history at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which trains officers for the British Army.

John Keegan remained there for 26 years, becoming a senior lecturer in military history during his tenure, during which he held a visiting professorship at Princeton University and was Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar College.

John Keegan wrote for the conservative American publication National Review Online.

John Keegan died on 2 August 2012 of natural causes at his home in Kilmington, Wiltshire.

John Keegan was survived by his wife, their two daughters and two sons.

John Keegan contributed to work on historiography in modern conflict.

Frank C Mahncke wrote that Keegan is seen as "among the most prominent and widely read military historians of the late twentieth century".

John Keegan was criticised by peers, including Sir Michael Howard and Christopher Bassford for his critical position on Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian officer and author of Vom Kriege, one of the basic texts on warfare and military strategy.

MacKenzie reports John Keegan as saying that the best panzer units of the Waffen SS altered the course of the war and were "faithful unto death and fiercer in combat than any soldiers who fought them on western battlefields".

On 29 June 1991, as a war correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, John Keegan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire "in recognition of service within the operations in the Gulf".

John Keegan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1986.