Keegan, Sir John Desmond Patrick
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan, 1934–2012, British military historian, b. London. The foremost British military historian of his era, he attended Oxford and after graduation went to the United States, where he studied the Civil War. Returning to Britain, he wrote reports for the U.S. embassy in London. In 1960 he began teaching military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; he remained there for the next 25 years. From 1986 until his death he was the military correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. Keegan wrote more than 20 books; The Face of Battle (1976), a study of the battles of Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815), and the Somme (1916), is generally considered his masterpiece. Another much lauded work is A History of Warfare (1993). His other books include The Mask of Command (1987), Fields of Battle: The Wars of North America (1996), The First World War (1999), and The American Civil War (2009). He was knighted in 2000.