Our guest today is former British diplomat and First World War scholar Dr. Tony Cowan. While in the Foreign Service, Tony held postings to Beijing, Hong Kong, Brussels, and The Hague. He was educated at Oxford, and following his retirement, he earned a PhD in military history from Kings College, London.

Tony’s publications include ‘The Introduction of New German Defensive Tactics in 1916-1917’ in the British Journal for Military History and “A Picture of German Unity? Federal Contingents in the German Army, 1916-1917’, in Jonathan Krause, ed., The Greater War: Other Combatants and Other Fronts, 1914–1918 (Palgrave Macmillan). He is the editor of The Catastrophe of 8 August 1918, which is a translation of Thilo von Bose’s Die Katastrophe des 8 August 1918, which was part of the German semi-official Schlachten des Weltkrieges (Battles of the World War) series. Most recently, Tony published Holding Out: The German Army and Operational Command in 1917 with Cambridge University Press’ Military Histories Series.

Tony has participated in the British Army’s staff rides for the First World War, and he is a member of the British Commission for Military History, Society of Military History, and Western Front Association.

Join us for a very interesting and entertaining chat with Tony Cowan. We'll talk reading Thucydides in Greek, the Hong Kong hand-over, command and the German Army, Augustiner Beer, and other "terrible confessions."

Rec.: 12/12/2023