Wheatcroft, Andrew 1944-
(Andrew Jonathan Maclean Wheatcroft)

PERSONAL:

Born July 20, 1944, in Woking, England; son of Eric Oscar (an engineer) and Denise Gurney Wheatcroft; married Janet Margaret Wear (a writer), July 28, 1970; children: James Otto Maclean von Veit, Artemis Auguste Victoria Frances, Thomas Lachlan Maclean, Anneyce Arabella Sibary. Education: Christ's College, Cambridge, B.A., 1966, M.A., 1970; attended University of Madrid.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, Stirling University, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland.

CAREER:

New Science Publications, London, England, marketing manager, 1968-70; Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, senior editor, 1970-73, consulting editor, 1975—; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, editorial director, 1973-75; editor at large, 1995—; University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, department of English Studies senior lecturer and Director of the Centre for Publishing Studies; writer.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Franz Hubmann, compiler, Kaiserliches und koenigliches Familienalbum: Die Welt von gestern in 319 alten Photographien, Molden, 1971, translation published as The Habsburg Empire: The World of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Original Photographs, 1840-1916, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1972.

(Editor) Marvin Lyons, Nicholas II, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1974.

(With John Keegan) Who's Who in Military History, Morrow (New York, NY), 1976.

(Editor, with Geoffrey Best) War, Economy, and the Military Mind, Rowman and Littlefield (Totowa, NJ), 1976.

(Editor) Marvin Lyons, Russia in Original Photographs, Scribner (New York, NY), 1977.

(Compiler) The Tennyson Album, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1980.

(With Lord Drogheda and Ken Davison) The Covent Gardens Album, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1981.

(Compiler) Dolin: Friends and Memories, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1982.

Arabia and the Gulf in Original Photographs, Kegan Paul International (Boston, MA), 1982.

The World Atlas of Revolutions, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1983.

(With John Keegan) Zones of Conflict: An Atlas of Future Wars, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1986.

Bahrain in Original Photographs, 1880-1961, Kegan Paul International (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Richard Overy) The Road to War, Macmillan (London, England), 1989, Random House (New York, NY), 1990, revised and updated edition, Penguin (New York, NY), 1999.

The Ottomans, Viking (London, England), 1993.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Original Photographs: 1880-1950, Kegan Paul International (New York, NY), 1994.

The Life and Times of Shaikh Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa: Ruler of Bahrain, 1942-1961, Kegan Paul (New York, NY), 1995.

The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.

Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam, Viking (London, England), 2003, Random House (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to Times Atlas of World History, and Cradle and Crucible: History and Faith in the Middle East, National Geographic, 2002. Also author of script for television special "Anyone for Tennyson," broadcast by Yorkshire Television, 1982. Joint editor of War and Society Newsletter. General editor of "Britain before the Conquest" series, 1978-81, and editor-in-chief of "Heritage: Care Preservation Management" publishing program, both for Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1990—. Member of editorial board, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1997—. Wheatcroft's books have been translated into Arabic, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

SIDELIGHTS:

Andrew Wheatcroft's compilation of The Tennyson Album contains numerous photographs of the famous poet, including some by Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron. James Atlas, writing in the New York Times Book Review, noted that "the text is brisk but self-assured," calling the collection of photographs "a startling assemblage." Spectator critic A.N. Wilson called the book "delightful" and added that Tennyson's "Garbolike self-protectiveness is partly explained when we peruse the photographs of the poet and his family."

In The Road to War, Wheatcroft and coauthor Richard Overy bring to light the origins of World War II from the perspective of eight countries involved in the hostilities: Britain, France, the United States, Japan, Poland, Russia, Germany, and Italy. Examining the diplomatic relations between the countries as well as major events that occurred in the period between the World Wars, "the authors combine compassion with understanding, to make sound historical sense," observed an Economist reviewer. Favorably noting the illustrations of propaganda accompanying the "engrossing narrative," a Publishers Weekly reviewer found The Road to War "a concise, highly readable account of how WWII came about."

Wheatcroft turns his attentions to the East in his 1993 work The Ottomans. Challenging European stereotypes about the Turks, the author chronicles the evolution of the Ottoman Empire, beginning with the fall of Constantinople to Sultan Mehned II in 1453 and continuing through the centuries to the introduction of a democratic, parliamentary government in the 1920s. "Mr. Wheatcroft sketches brilliantly the growth, over the centuries, of a stereotypical Western view of ‘the Turk,’ and its apparent ossification about 150 years ago," claimed National Review contributor Herb Greer. History Today critic Philip Mansel was more impressed with Wheatcroft's coverage of the conflicts in which the Ottoman Empire was engaged, noting the author "is particularly strong on logistics and military history."

Continuing his studies about the Christian West and the Muslim East in Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam, Wheatcroft examines this history of distrust between the peoples of each faith. The Crusades, the European struggle against the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and the early twenty-first-century war on radical Islamic terrorism each receive in-depth treatment by the author, who argues that through the ages, the conflict has contributed not only to the development of improved weapons and military strategies but also to hateful attitudes religious men and women on both sides have perpetuated. While Library Journal critic William P. Collins suggested Infidels "contains helpful information on the origins of Christian-Muslim antagonisms," he did not find it "incisive or complete enough to stand on its own." However, writing in Booklist, Bryce Christensen considered the book a "timely chronicle" and "a work that interprets today's headlines within a very long chronology."

Wheatcroft once told CA: "I have spent … years trying to enhance the status of visual images as historical source material, as documents often as significant as textual evidence. In my … work I [use] graphic techniques to present hard historical data, seeking to express history in action on the ground. For the last ten years I have been working with western images of the Ottoman empire, between the fifteenth and the nineteenth century and this will become an international database project called Imagining Orientalism in the next few years."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2004, Bryce Christensen, review of Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam, p. 1672.

Economist, September 2, 1989, review of The Road to War, p. 83.

History Today, February, 1996, Philip Mansel, review of The Ottomans, p. 55.

Journal of European Studies, June, 1996, Joachim Whaley, review of The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire, p. 235.

Library Journal, June 15, 2004, William P. Collins, review of Infidels, p. 75.

Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2004, review of Infidels.

National Review, August 15, 1994, Herb Greer, review of The Ottomans, p. 68.

New York Times Book Review, December 14, 1980, James Atlas, review of The Tennyson Album, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, March 9, 1990, review of The Road to War, p. 55.

Spectator, November 8, 1980, A.N. Wilson, review of The Tennyson Album.

ONLINE

Penguin Canada Web site,http://www.penguin.ca/ (July 27, 2006), interview with author.