David Geoffrey Chandler

Background

David Chandler was born on the 15th of January, 1934 in the United Kingdom, the son of a clergyman who had lost a leg as a junior officer in the First World War.

Education

David Chandler studied at Keble College, Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in 1955, followed by a diploma of education in 1956. Later he received a Master's degree in 1960 from Keble.

Chandler was awarded the Doctor of Letters from Oxford University in 1991.

Career

When David was volunteered to run a course on the Duke of Marlborough and two Second World War campaigns, he joined the faculty at Sandhurst as a lecturer in politics and modern history, eventually rising to the post of head of the department of war studies and international affairs from 1980 until his 1994 retirement. He was a visiting professor at Ohio State University in 1970, at the Virginia Military Institute in 1988 and Marine Corps University in 1991.

The historian is best remembered for his first book “The Campaigns of Napoleon” that was written in 1967, which has been praised by such modern-day generals as Charles de Gaulle and Norman Schwarzkopf. The historian went on to write many more books after this, many of them on the Napoleonic wars and the wars of the Spanish succession, but he also released works on the twentieth-century battles, including a number of dictionaries and encyclopedias. Among these are “Marlborough as Military Commander” written in 1973, “A Dictionary of Napoleonic Wars” in 1979, “Battles and Battle-Scenes of World War II” in 1989, “Jena 1806” in 1993, and “On the Napoleonic Wars” in 1994.

As a recognized authority on military history, Chandler was frequently consulted to assist with television programs, such as a British Broadcasting Corp. production of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace during the early 1970s. He was also a popular battlefields guide and general editor of Osprey's series of military campaigns, for which he produced accounts of Austerlitz and Jena complete with concluding chapters for would be wargamers.

Achievements

• David Chandler's book "The Campaigns of Napoleon" has been translated into several languages. General Norman Schwarzkopf, the American commander in the Iraq war of 1991, was influenced by Chandler; and many high-ranking British officers have been his pupils.

Works

More photos

• book

  • On The Napoleonic Wars

    (The diverse array of subjects covered include the British...)

    1994
  • The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army

    (Comprehensive, authoritative, and lavishly illustrated, T...)

    1994
  • Blenheim preparation

    (In this book, all aspects of the Duke of Marlborough's ca...)

    2004
  • The Campaigns of Napoleon

    (The Campaigns of Napoleon is an exhaustive analysis and c...)

    1967
  • Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars

    (The Wordsworth Military Library covers the breadth of mil...)

    1979
  • Atlas of Military Strategy: The Art, Theory and Practice of War, 1618-1878

    (See how great field generals used and changed traditional...)

    1980
  • Austerlitz 1805: The fate of empires

    (This all-new volume chronicles the events that climaxed o...)

    1990
  • Waterloo, the Hundred Days

    (A classic military history, one of the standard accounts ...)

    1981
  • Napoleon

    (In Napoleon, Chandler places the emperor's 60 battles in ...)

    1973
  • The Military Maxims of Napoleon

    (The Military Maxims of Napoleon is a unique collection of...)

    1987
  • Marlborough as military commander

    (To the author, Marlborough is the greatest British milita...)

    1979
  • The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough 1990

Interests

• Military history, especially the Napoleonic wars

Connections

David was married to Gill Chandler. They had sons.

Wife:

Gill Chandler