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Sir Max Hastings (born December 28, 1945) is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar and, after her divorce from her first husband, the wife of Sir Osbert Lancaster.

Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year. He became a foreign correspondent and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC television and for The Evening Standard in London. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph he returned to The Evening Standard as editor in 1996 until his retirement in 2001. He was knighted in 2002.

When Hastings was with the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment as part of the British press corps reporting the Falklands War, the troops were ordered to stop but Hastings received no order and walked on, becoming the first man with the Falklands Task Force to arrive in the capital, Port Stanley. He then arranged an interview with the commanding officer of the Argentine forces who had occupied the islands. It was this audacity that won him a double award in 1982: Journalist of the Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year.

He has won many other awards for his journalism, including Editor of the Year in 1988.

He has presented historical documentaries for BBC TV, and is the author of many books, including Bomber Command which earned the Somerset Maugham Award for nonfiction in 1980. Both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was made President of the Council for the Protection of Rural England in 2002. He has two children and lives in Berkshire.

He currently writes a column for the Daily Mail but often contributes articles to other publications such as The Guardian.

• Warriors: Exceptional Tales from the Battlefield (HarperCollins, 2005) ISBN 0-00-719756-X
• Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45 (Macmillan, 2004) ISBN 0-333-90836-8
• Editor: A Memoir (Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 0-333-90837-6
• Going to the Wars (Macmillan, 2000) ISBN 0-333-77104-4
• Scattered Shots (Macmillan, 1999) ISBN 0-333-77103-6
• Victory in Europe: D-Day to V-E Day (Little Brown & C, 1992) ISBN 0-316-81334-6
• Outside Days (Michael Joseph, 1989) ISBN 0-7181-3330-7
• The Korean War (Michael Joseph, 1987) ISBN 0-7181-2068-X, (Simon & Schuster, 1987) ISBN 0-671-52823-8
• The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1985) ISBN 0-19-214107-4
• Victory in Europe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985) ISBN 0-297-78650-4
• Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (Simon & Schuster, 1984) ISBN 0-671-46029-3
• The Battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings, Simon Jenkins (W W Norton, 1983) ISBN 0-393-01761-3, (Michael Joseph, 1983) ISBN 0-7181-2228-3
• Das Reich: March of the Second Ss Panzer Division Through France (Henry Holt & Co, 1982) ISBN 0-03-057059-X
• Das Reich: Resistance and the March of the Second S.S. Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Michael Joseph, 1981) ISBN 0-7181-2074-4
• Battle of Britain by Len Deighton, Max Hastings (Jonathan Cape, 1980) ISBN 0-224-01826-4
• Yoni - Hero of Entebbe: Life of Yonathan Netanyahu (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980) ISBN 0-297-77565-0
• Bomber Command (Michael Joseph, 1979) ISBN 0-7181-1603-8
• Montrose: The King's Champion (Gollancz, 1977) ISBN 0-575-02226-4
• Ulster 1969: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (Gollancz, 1970) ISBN 0-575-00482-7
• America, 1968: The Fire This Time (Gollancz, 1969) ISBN 0-575-00234-4
• Country Fair (HarperCollins, October 2005) ISBN 007198868. 288pp