The War Hero Who Became Britain's Greatest Historian

Sir Michael Howard, venerable academic and adviser to primeministers, is 94. James Hanning met him in his bucolic Berkshire home.

 

To say Sir Michael Howard is eminent is to be so understated as to almost defame him. He was Professor of the History of War, Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University. He has advised prime ministers, written countless books on the conduct of war and did more than anyone in Britain to develop strategic studies as an academic discipline.

He met A J P Taylor, Arthur Koestler, Michael Flanders, Guy Burgess, Humphrey Lyttelton, Rab Butler, E M Forster, Cyril Connolly and Ralph Richardson, as recounted in Captain Professor, his mortar-to-mortarboard memoir published eleven years ago.

Sir Max Hastings calls him ‘the wisest man I know’ and ‘Britain’s greatest living historian’. Now 94, he lives quietly with Mark James, his partner of more than fifty years, and his 4,000 books in a caricature of comfortable village life in Berkshire. Since a heart attack last year which curtailed his ‘zealous’ gardening, the only time he goes to London these days is to see the Queen (not that he puts it that way) for Order of Merit dinners. He follows the world via press, TV and the internet with as much acuity as ever.

If ever a venerable academic was entitled to become a crusty old don – and he was, after all, a friend of John Sparrow of All Souls, the crusty don cum laude – it is Michael Howard; but he is indeed, as one mutual friend calls him, ‘the nice Michael Howard’.