Gary Sheffield (historian)

Professor Gary Sheffield is an English academic at the University of Birmingham and a military historian. He has published widely, especially on the First World War, and contributes to many newspapers, journals and magazines. He frequently broadcasts on television and radio.

Sheffield studied history at the University of Leeds under Edward Spiers and Hugh Cecil. He followed his basic degree course with a research MA. In 1985, he became a lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and studied at King’s College, London under Brian Bond for a part-time PhD awarded in 1994. In 1999 he became a senior lecturer in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London and Land Warfare Historian on the Higher Command and Staff Course at the UK's Joint Services Command and Staff College. In 2005 he was appointed Professor of Modern history at King's College London.

In 2006, Sheffield was appointed Professor of War studies at the University of Birmingham. He is currently researching a study of the British and Commonwealth soldier in the Second World War, provisionally entitled Citizen Army. Sheffield is variously credited as Gary Sheffield, G. Sheffield and G. D. Sheffield. In 2013 Sheffield was appointed Professor of War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton.

Among his recent publications is: "Dead cows and Tigers: some aspects of the experience of the British soldier in Normandy, 1944", In John Buckley, ed., The Normandy Campaign Sixty Years On (London: Routledge, 2006).

In 2011 he published his second book on Field Marshal Douglas Haig, titled "The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army" (Aurum Press, 2011). The Daily Telegraph reviewer praised "Sheffield’s solid scholarship and admirable advocacy" yet added that "the nagging thought remains: what a terrible shame it was that Haig’s progress along his learning curve had to be greased by such deep floods of blood."

Publications

 * The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army (Aurum Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1845136918).
 * The War Studies Reader (Continuum, 2010)
 * Imperial War Museum's 1914-1918 The Western Front Experience (Carlton Books, 2008)
 * Ed., War on the Western Front: In the Trenches of World War I (Osprey, 2007)
 * Ed. with J. Bourne, Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters 1914-1918 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005; Phoenix, 2006)
 * The Somme: A New History (Cassell Military Paperbacks, 2004)
 * Forgotten Victory: The First World War - Myths and Realities (Headline, 2001; Review, 2002)
 * 'Leadership in the Trenches: Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the era of the First World War (Macmillan, 2000)
 * Ed., Leadership and Command: The Anglo-American Military Experience Since 1861 (Brassey's, 1996; New Edition, 2002)
 * Ed. with D. Todman, Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army's Experience, 1914-19 (Spellmount, 2004) ISBN 978-1-86227-083-1
 * The Redcaps: History of the Royal Military Police and Its Antecedents from the Middle Ages to the Gulf War (Brassey's, 1994) ISBN 978-1-85753-029-2