Alistair Horne

Sir Alistair Allan Horne CBE FRSL (9 November 1925 – 25 May 2017) was a British historian and academic best known for his works about armed conflicts involving 19th- and 20th-century France, including his classic about the Algerian War, A Savage War of Peace. A former spy and journalist, Horne wrote more than 20 books on travel, history, and biography.

Quotes

• It is not in South-east Asia, the Middle East or Africa that the ideological battle of the seventies seems likely to be waged, but in South America. Here, one feels, may well be the battleground where the orthodoxy of Soviet communism will triumph definitively over Maoism, or vice versa.
  • Small Earthquake in Chile (1972; 1990), p. 26

• But what really matters is...the question: "How many divisions does the Pope have?"
  In Chile it has been the concentrated fire power of the "divisions" of militant trade unionists that has enabled Allende to carry through his revolutionary programme (thereby, incidentally, bringing the economy to ruin and the country to the verge of civil war). And, in the British context of, say, 1980, on whose side could one count the comparable trade union "divisions"? With the "Lib-Labs" or the "Soc-Labs"?
  • Letter to The Times (6 August 1973), p. 13

• I was in Chile shortly after Allende came to power, and predicted the economic ruin to which his regime reduced the country. That, coupled with the recent escalation in the arming of extreme left-wing para-military groups, seemed to make at least a temporary military take-over inevitable sooner or later, if all-out civil war was to be averted. The activities of Señor Corvalán's Communist Party, sub rosa, indeed bore a large responsibility for the chaos and generation of hatreds which led to the present intervention by the military. Equally...Chile is now in a "kind of civil war", and therefore draconian measures (of brief duration, one hopes) by the new regime have to be expected.
  • Letter to The Times (10 October 1973), p. 10

• Above all, what was most lacking on the French side was the will to fight. The memories of the 1,500,000 dead of the First World War, the sapping effects of the Front Populaire, the unhelpfulness of Britain as a military partner in the interwar years (even by September 1939 four divisions were all she could send to France), appeasement, Hitler's bloodless victories and the appallingly swift smashing-up of Poland had all left their mark, as had the lethargy of the months of the "phoney war".
  • 'Five days that changed the world', The Times Saturday Review (10 May 1980), p. 8
  • Written for the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of France

Quotes about Alistair Horne

• Alistair Horne has written a brilliant reportage-narrative history, highly compressed, using sources mainly hostile to the Commune, and rarely quoting any official publications of the Commune or the memoirs of the survivors. Yet it pulsates with deep feeling and conveys the mood of the time. Its rich illustrations are a boon for the reader. Ideological issues are dismissed, and events are seen as a deep human tragedy.
  • Chimen Abramsky, '‘That little flame that never dies’', The Times (3 June 1971), p. 12
  • A review of The Terrible Year: The Paris Commune, 1871

• Mr Horne's book, recounting events in Germany since 1952, fills an important gap, for there is an obvious danger in discussing Germany's future always in terms of her past. This is journalism at its best, in the tradition of the great foreign correspondents of the 1930s, not pretending to be history but retelling, with all the liveliness of the born reporter and without prejudice, as remarkable a story as any in the post-war decade. If ever a book was topical, this one is: here is the background to the Geneva talks in their most important sector.
  • Alan Bullock, review of Back into Power, quoted in The Times (21 July 1955), p. 11

• Occasionally an epic subject encounters a fine historian. This the the case with the Algerian war and Mr Horne. The result is a book of compelling power, written with compassion and understanding.
  • Raymond Carr, 'No resting-place', The Spectator (22 October 1977), p. 16
  • A review of A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962

• One of the best written on the whole Algerian drama.
  • Jean Lacouture, review of A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 in The Sunday Times, quoted in The Times (3 November 1977), p. 13

• It is clear that Horne's own political sympathies lie on the middle ground of rational reform and cooperation, none the less valuable for the fact, that, as the struggle in Algeria grew in ferocity, the centre began to vanish from sight.
  • Michael Ratcliffe, 'A terrible and tremendous tale', The Times (20 October 1977), p. 20
  • A review of A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962

• His best achievement...shows him at the peak of his power.
  • C. P. Snow, review of A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 in The Financial Times, quoted in The Times (3 November 1977), p. 13

• In the fog of war Mr. Horne manages to show exactly what was happening, without ever going beyond the evidence. The book combines good history and good reading.
  • A. J. P. Taylor, review of To Lose a Battle: France 1940 in The Observer, quoted in The Times (24 May 1969), p. 20

• Unlikely to be challenged as the definitive account of one of the most efficient and astonishing campaigns of all time.
  • The Times Literary Supplement, review of To Lose a Battle: France 1940, quoted in The Times (24 May 1969), p. 20