Correlli Barnett (Correlli Douglas Barnett) Biography

British military historian, born at Norbury in Surrey, educated at Exeter College, Oxford. In 1977 he became Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University. The Desert Generals (1960), a controversial study of the North African Campaign, established Barnett's reputation as a military historian; his subsequent works, which are noted for their concentration and lucidity, include The Swordbearers (1963), on the commanders of the First World War; Britain and Her Army (1970), a review of interactions between the army and society in Britain from the Tudor era onward; The Great War (1979); and Engage the Enemy more Closely (1991), a survey of the Royal Navy in the Second World War. Barnett's ‘Pride and the Fall’ series, an analysis of Britain's industrial and political decline since the late nineteenth century, includes The Collapse of British Power (1972), The Audit of War (1986), and The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities, 1945–50 (1995).