Guy Walters


Guy Edward Barham Walters is a British author, historian, and journalist. He is the author and editor of nine books on the Second World War, including war thrillers, and a historical analysis of the Berlin Olympic Games.

Early life and education

Walters was born in Kensington, London, on 8 August 1971. He is a descendant of Richard Harris Barham and Edward Augustus Bond. He was educated at Cheam School, Eton College, Westfield College, University of London, and is studying for a PhD in history at Newcastle University. His thesis is on the postwar activities of Werner Naumann.

Career

From 1992 to 2000, he worked at The Times. His first book, The Traitor, was published in 2002, and concerns the British Free Corps, a British unit of the Waffen-SS. The Leader is set in a Britain ruled by Oswald Mosley as a Fascist dictator. The Occupation takes place during the German occupation of the Channel Islands. The Colditz Legacy is set in Colditz Castle during the war and the 1970s.
With James Owen, he edited The Voice of War in 2004, a collection of Second World War memoirs. In 2006 he published Berlin Games, a history of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was shortlisted for the 2006 William Hill Sports Book of the Year and the 2007 Outstanding Book of the Year by the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.
In 2009, Walters published Hunting Evil, a history of how the Nazi war criminals escaped after the war, and how they were brought to justice.
"Frustrated at the enormous amount of junk history around, Guy sees it as his personal mission to wage war on ignorance and misconceptions about the past.". He was scathing about the Hitler conspiracy book and film Grey Wolf describing it as "2,000 per cent rubbish" when the book was published. Walters added: "It's an absolute disgrace. There's no substance to it at all. It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research."
Walters has raised questions regarding the veracity of Denis Avey's claims to have smuggled himself into Auschwitz and about fraudulent Holocaust memoirs generally, and has questioned the level of acclaim given to Mary Seacole.
In June 2013, he was appointed to the position of lecturer in modern British history at the New College of the Humanities in London.
He is a contributor to the Jeremy Vine BBC2 show.

Personal life

Walters lives in Wiltshire with his wife Annabel Venning and their two children.

Selected publications

Fiction