Hugh Bicheno (born 1948) is a
political risk
Political risk is a type of risk faced by investors, corporations, and governments that political decisions, events, or conditions will significantly affect the profitability of a business actor or the expected value of a given economic action. ...
analyst and an
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
of conflict. He is best known for his interpretations of the
Falklands War in ''Razor's Edge: The Unofficial History of the Falklands War'' and of the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
in ''Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War''.
Biography
Bicheno was born in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
to British parents in 1948. He was educated in Cuba, Chile and Scotland before winning a scholarship to
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he won a first class honours degree in History. He was first an academic and then an officer in the British
Secret Intelligence Service, serving in Buenos Aires during the 'Dirty War.'
Later he became a security consultant specialising in kidnap negotiations and was the adviser in 27 cases. He lived in Italy and then in Guatemala before moving to the United States for several years and becoming a
naturalised
Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the i ...
citizen. He returned to England to pursue his life-long ambition to write books about conflict.
He is bilingual English-Spanish, speaks and reads Italian and French.
Writing
Reviewing ''Razor's Edge'', the late and eminent military historian Sir John Keegan commented that "It may seem impossible for anything original to appear about the Falklands War, so much has been written about it, but Hugh Bicheno's book is that thing . . . readers will find this book gripping and discomfiting."
Celebrated military historian Sir Max Hastings, who took part in the campaign as a journalist and co-wrote the first and still highly regarded account of the war, commented: "Bicheno understands how battles are fought, and explains those of the Falklands better than any other writer has done . . . he knows how soldiers fight battles and has done us all a service by explaining them so well for a new generation."
Bicheno collaborated with his friend the late
Richard Holmes on ''Battlefields of the Second World War'', ''In the Footsteps of Churchill'' and ''The World at War''. Holmes wrote the prefaces to ''Rebels and Redcoats'' and ''Razor's Edge'' and also made a
television series adaptation of ''Rebels and Redcoats''.
Works
* ''Gettysburg'' (Cassell, 2001)
* ''Midway'' (Cassell, 2001)
* ''Rebels & Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War'' (HarperCollins 2003)
* ''Crescent and Cross: The Battle of Lepanto, 1571'' (Cassell, 2003)
* ''Razor's Edge: The Unofficial History of the Falklands War'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006)
* ''Vendetta: High Art and Low Cunning at the Birth of the Renaissance'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008)
* ''Elizabeth's Sea Dogs: How the English Became the Scourge of the Seas'' (Conway, 2012)
* ''Battle Royal: the Wars of Lancaster and York 1440-1462'' (Head of Zeus, 2015)
* ''Blood Royal: the Wars of Lancaster and York 1462-1485'' (Head of Zeus, 2016)
* ''Crescent and Cross'' (Endeavour Kindle Edition, 2019)
* ''The Wars of the Roses'' (Head of Zeus, 2019)
References
English historians
Living people
1948 births
British military historians
Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
British emigrants to the United States
British expatriates in Cuba
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
Naturalized citizens of the United States
American male non-fiction writers
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