Alistair Horne

Alistair Horne was educated in Switzerland, at Millbrook School, New York, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he played international ice hockey. In World War II, initially a volunteer in the RAF, he served with the Coldstream Guards between 1944 and 1947, ending as a captain attached to MI5 in the Middle East. In the 1950s he was a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph until taking up a full-time writing career in 1955.