Alexander Watson is Professor of History at Goldsmiths, University of London.

I'm a historian interested in the conflicts and catastrophes in Europe during the 20th century. I've written three books, all on the century's 'seminal catastrophe' - the First World War. My books have all won major prizes, have been widely reviewed and are unusual in focussing on the side for far too long simplistically perceived as the war's 'baddies' - the Germans and Austro-Hungarians.

My book 'Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918' (Penguin and Basic Books, 2014) is an epic narrative of the First World War written - for the first time - from the perspectives of the Central Powers and their peoples. The Wall Street Journal called it 'truly indispensable ... a history as much of the emotions that hardship and war produced as of politics or diplomacy'. The Sunday Times named it 'The History of Book of the Year' for 2014. 'Ring of Steel' won the Wolfson History Prize, the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the US Society for Military History's 'Distinguished Book Award' and the British Army's 'Military Book of the Year Award'.

'The Fortress: The Siege of Przemyśl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands' (Allen Lane, 2019 and Basic Books, 2020) is my most recent book.
It tells the moving story of the First World War's longest siege - a dramatic campaign that opened the horrors which would ravage twentieth-century East-Central Europe. 'The Fortress' won the US Society for Military History's 'Distinguished Book Award' and was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History and the British Army Military Book of the Year Award. It was a BBC History Magazine 2019 and Financial Times 2020 'Book of the Year'. The Times praised the book as 'a masterpiece ... It deserves to become a classic of military history.'

My first book, 'Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918' (Cambridge University Press, 2008) explored how armies and soldiers on both psychologically endured and kept on fighting through four years of horror on the Western Front. The book won the Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library's Fraenkel Prize.