Geoffrey Best

Geoffrey Francis Andrew Best FBA (20 November 1928 – 14 January 2018) was an English historian known for his studies of warfare and works about Winston Churchill.

Early life and family Geoffrey Best was born in Osterley, Middlesex, on 20 November 1928. He was educated at St Paul's School, London. He undertook his national service in the Royal Army Educational Corps teaching illiterate Scottish soldiers to read and write.

Best married Marigold Davies in 1955 and they had three children together. Marigold later became involved in Quakerism and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and she and her husband went on CND marches together. before in 1988 becoming a member of St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

Writing In 1974, Best became series editor of the Fontana History of European War and Society for which he wrote War and Society in Revolutionary Europe 1770-1870 (1982).

He wrote two books on Winston Churchill, Churchill: A Study in Greatness (2001) and Churchill and War (2005).

Death Best died on 14 January 2018. Honour among Men and Nations: Transformations of an Idea. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1981. War and Society in Revolutionary Europe 1770-1870. Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1982. Nuremberg and After: The Continuing History of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. University of Reading, Reading, 1984. (Stenton lecture) War and Law since 1945. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994. Churchill: A Study in Greatness. Bloomsbury, London, 2001. Churchill and War. Hambledon Continuum, 2005. A Life of Learning: Selective Memoirs of Geoffrey Best. Matador, Kibworth Beauchamp, 2010.

Edited Church, R.W. The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years, 1833-1845. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970. (Edited and introduced) War, Economy and the Military Mind. Croom Helm, London, 1976. (With Andrew Wheatcroft) History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Owen Chadwick. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985. (with Derek Beales) The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and its Legacy, 1789-1989. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988.