Military historian Sir John Keegan has died, age 78.
Keegan’s books have been part of my life for a very long time. When I was a kid, I devoured A History of Warfare; when I was in university, some of my fondest memories are of sitting down in the library to read The Second World War. As a grown-up, I’ve read The Face of Battle (the classic that started it all) and The Book of War (an excellent anthology of writing on war, ranging from Caesar’s Commentaries to the anti-war poem “After Blenheim“). I still have another Keegan book, The Mask of Command, sitting on my to-read shelf. This news leaves me surprised and saddened — the man seemed eternal. Now he will be. RIP, Sir John.