Peter Hart (born 10 January 1955, in Weardale, England) is a British military historian.
Hart grew up in Stanhope and Barton-under-Needwood. He attended school in Chesterfield, Derbyshire (1967–73) and Liverpool University (1973–76). He then undertook a post-graduate teaching course at Crewe & Alsager College (1976–77), and lastly a post-graduate librarianship at Liverpool Polytechnic (1979–80). He was an oral historian at the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum in London from 1981 to January 2020. [1] [2]
Hart has written mainly on British participation in the First World War. His books include; The Somme, Jutland 1916, Bloody April on the air war in 1917, Passchendaele, Aces Falling (on the air war in 1918), 1918 A Very British Victory and Gallipoli . He is a regular contributor to Britain at War magazine.
Hart's books contain references to the eyewitness accounts of the participants, many of whom he has interviewed. [lower-alpha 1]
In recent years, Hart has been a frequent visitor to the Gallipoli peninsula, accompanying group tours of the battlefields. [4] In so doing, he made the acquaintance of Australian historian Mat McLachlan. [5]
After retiring from the Imperial War Museum, Hart launched the "Pete & Gary's Military History" podcast. The debut podcast was made available in February 2020. His friend Gary Bain serves as a Straight man foil to the irreverent Hart persona. [6] The blend of historic analysis coupled with humour has its critics but reviews are generally favourable. [7] The podcast is backed by McLachlan, and is a Living History production. [lower-alpha 2]
Hart's most recent book on Gallipoli was published by McLachlan's Living History production. In 2022, he published "Laugh or Cry". [9]
Hart has also made contributions to the "History Hit" podcast series chaired by Dan Snow. [10] [11]
Hart has given talks at symposiums, alongside the likes of Taff Gillingham, Spencer Jones, Alexandra Churchill, Rob Thompson and Richard Van Emden. His expertise has seen him engaged by the Great War Group and regional associations of the Western Front Association to give presentations at their meetings. [12] [13]
Peter Hart has been Oral Historian at the Imperial War Museum since 1981. He has written several books about various aspects of the First World War, including Gallipoli and aerial warfare. His latest book is Fire and Movement, which takes a fresh look at the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914.
Peter Hart worked as the oral historian of the Imperial War Museum from 1981–2020. He is the author of several military history books on the First and Second World Wars.
Peter established Peter Hart Battlefield tours in 2012 and has visited the peninsular well over 50 times.
Mat interviews Imperial War Museum historian Peter Hart about the closing days of the First World War, and the crucial role played by Australian, British and American troops in defeating the German Army.
It's refreshing to find a podcast with very knowledgeable hosts, who also do not take themselves seriously
Customer Reviews 4.6 out of 5; 110 Ratings
Peter Hart is the former oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, London, and co-author of Laugh or Cry: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Pen & Sword Military, 2022)
Dan and historian Peter Hart discuss how the Gallipoli garrison escaped to fight another day. Peter Hart was an oral historian at the Imperial War Museum for almost 40 years, during that time he interviewed thousands of veterans. An internationally acknowledged expert on Gallipoli, he is uniquely well placed to tell this remarkable story.
This is part 1 of a two-part Christmas podcast that explores the truce with three distinguished historians, Peter Hart, Taff Gillingham and Rob Schaefer. We also hear extracts of letters and diaries from the men involved, including some broadcast here for the first time in English. This episode was first released on 23rd December 2020.
Join us for our annual get together. This year it takes place in Chester. [21 October 2022] Friday afternoon war walk option, evening keynotes with Vanda Wilcox, Richard Van Emden and social afterwards. Saturday all-day ticket with seminars and keynotes from Peter Hart, Alex Churchill & Nicolai Eberholst
We welcome Peter Hart back to Hornchurch for a talk on a naval theme on Wednesday 14th of February 2024. Peter will be telling the story of HMS Warspite in the First World War.
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The Western Front was one of the main theatres of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The German advance was halted with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, the position of which changed little except during early 1917 and again in 1918.
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme offensive, was a major battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and the French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the river Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies. More than three million men fought in the battle, of whom more than one million were either wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in all of human history.
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six-divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane Reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
The Gallipoli campaign, the Dardanelles campaign, the Defence of Gallipoli or the Battle of Gallipoli was a military campaign in the First World War on the Gallipoli peninsula from 19 February 1915 to 9 January 1916. The Entente powers, Britain, France and the Russian Empire, sought to weaken the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, by taking control of the Ottoman straits. This would expose the Ottoman capital at Constantinople to bombardment by Entente battleships and cut it off from the Asian part of the empire. With the Ottoman Empire defeated, the Suez Canal would be safe and the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits would be open to Entente supplies to the Black Sea and warm-water ports in Russia.
The 29th Division, known as the Incomparable Division, was an infantry division of the British Army, formed in early 1915 by combining various Regular Army units that had been acting as garrisons around the British Empire. Under the command of Major-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, the division fought throughout the Gallipoli Campaign, including the original landing at Cape Helles. From 1916 to the end of the war the division fought on the Western Front in Belgium and France.
The 63rd Division was a United Kingdom infantry division of the First World War. It was originally formed as the Royal Naval Division at the outbreak of the war, from Royal Navy and Royal Marine reservists and volunteers, who were not needed for service at sea. For RN personnel, the designation HMS Victory IV was used. The division fought at Antwerp in 1914 and at Gallipoli in 1915. In 1916, following many losses among the original naval volunteers, the division was transferred to the British Army as the 63rd Division, re-using the number from the disbanded second-line 63rd Division Territorial Force. As an Army formation, it fought on the Western Front for the remainder of the war.
The German spring offensive, or Kaiserschlacht, also known as the Ludendorff offensive, was a series of German attacks along the Western Front during the First World War, beginning on 21 March 1918. Following American entry into the war in April 1917, the Germans decided that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the United States could ship soldiers across the Atlantic and fully deploy its resources. The German Army had gained a temporary advantage in numbers as nearly 50 divisions had been freed by the Russian defeat and withdrawal from the war with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The 38th (Welsh) Division of the British Army was active during both the First and Second World Wars. In 1914, the division was raised as the 43rd Division of Herbert Kitchener's New Army, and was originally intended to form part of a 50,000-strong Welsh Army Corps that had been championed by David Lloyd George; the assignment of Welsh recruits to other formations meant that this concept was never realised.
The Battle of Pozières took place in northern France around the village of Pozières, during the Battle of the Somme. The costly fighting ended with the British in possession of the plateau north and east of the village, in a position to menace the German bastion of Thiepval from the rear. The Australian official historian Charles Bean wrote that Pozières ridge "is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth".
Lyn Macdonald, was a British military historian, one of relatively few women in the field. Macdonald was best known for a series of books on the First World War that draw on first hand accounts of surviving veterans.
The Second Battle of the Somme of 1918 was fought during the First World War on the Western Front from late August to early September, in the basin of the River Somme. It was part of a series of successful counter-offensives in response to the German Spring Offensive, after a pause for redeployment and supply.
Gary D. Sheffield is an English academic and military historian. He publishes on the conduct of British Army operations in World War I, and contributes to print and broadcast media on the subject.
John Simon Fowler is an English social historian and author who lives in Kew, Richmond, London and is vice-chair of the Richmond Local History Society. He has written many books relating to family history and social history.
The Battle of the Boar's Head was an attack on 30 June 1916 at Richebourg-l'Avoué in France, during the First World War. Troops of the 39th Division, XI Corps in the First Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), advanced to capture the Boar's Head, a salient held by the German 6th Army. Two battalions of the 116th Brigade, with one battalion forming carrying parties, attacked the German front position before dawn on 30 June. The British took and held the German front line trench and the second trench for several hours, before retiring to their lines having lost 850–1,366 casualties.
Operation Alberich was the code name of a German military operation in France during the First World War. Two salients had been formed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 between Arras and Saint-Quentin and from Saint-Quentin to Noyon. Alberich was planned as a strategic withdrawal to new positions on the shorter and more easily defended Hindenburg Line.
This is the order of battle for the Battle of the Somme. The Battle of the Somme was an offensive fought on the Western Front during World War I from 1 July to 18 November 1916 as one of the greatest engagements of the war. It was fought between French, British and Dominion forces and the German Empire in the Somme River valley and vicinity in northern France.
The Battle of Delville Wood was fought from 14 July to 3 September 1916, one of the twelve battles of the Somme in 1916. It was fought by the British and French against the army of the German Empire in the Somme River valley in northern France. The battle was the début of the 1st South African Brigade on the Western Front, which captured Delville Wood and held it from 15 to 19 July. The casualties of the brigade were similar to those of many British brigades on First day on the Somme.
Andrew Moncrieff Given was a New Zealand cricketer. He played one first-class match for Otago during the 1914–15 season. He was killed in action during World War I.
The Y Sap mine was an underground explosive charge, secretly planted by the British during the First World War and ready for 1 July 1916, the first day on the Somme. The mine was dug by the Tunnelling Companies of the Royal Engineers under a German machine-gun nest known as Blinddarm (appendix) in the front line, on the north side of the village of La Boisselle in the Somme département. The mine was named after Y Sap, the British trench from which the gallery was driven. It was one of 19 mines on the British sector to be blown at the start of the battle.
World War I was fought on many fronts around the world from the battlefields of Europe to the far-flung colonies in the Pacific and Africa. While it is most famous for the trench warfare stalemate that existed on Europe's Western Front, in other theatres of combat the fighting was mobile and often involved set-piece battles and cavalry charges. The Eastern Front often took thousands of casualties a day during the major offensive pushes, but it was the West that saw the most concentrated slaughter. It was in the west that the newly industrialized world powers could focus their end products on the military–industrial complex. The deadliest day of the war was during the opening days of the conflict. The Imperial German war council had initiated the Schlieffen Plan which involved multiple armies flooding through the borders of Belgium and France. On August 22, 1914, during the Battle of the Frontiers, five separate French armies engaged the German invaders independently of each other. Across all those battlefields, on that single day, 27,000 French soldiers lost their lives protecting their country.
