GUEST,Dave - 12 Dec 15 - 06:21 AM

Max Hastings is a journalist, author and editor of right-wing newspapers. Keith you were asking for eminient historians to be respected by their peers, and Teribus stated that Hastings received good peer reviews in academic circles, but Hastings and also Nigel H. Jones sit outside the formal academic peer review system. They are not formally academic historians, they are amateurs in that they are paid to do something else.

Sir Max Hastings has been retired for some years now, if you want to be accurate, he writes occasional pieces for whoever he likes, he is also elected to become a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, here are some general facts about the Society - read 'em you might just learn something (Although in your case I rather doubt it - you seem to revel in illustrating that you are as "thick as shit" and proud of it)

"Fellowships are awarded to those who have made "an original contribution to historical scholarship", normally through the authorship of a monograph, a body of scholarly work similar in scale and impact to a monograph, or the organisation of exhibitions, conferences, the editing of journals and other works of diffusion and dissemination grounded in historical scholarship. Election is conducted by peer review and all applications must be supported by an existing Fellow. Applications are welcome from historians working within or outside the UK." - Source RHS Website

"Since it was founded in 1868 the RHS has become the foremost society in the UK working with professional historians and advancing the scholarly study of the past. We are a learned society with charitable status that is increasingly at the forefront of policy debates about the study of history. We work closely with the Historical Association, the body that leads on history in schools, the Institute of Historical Research, a central hub for the provision of research resources, and History UK (HE), a council of representatives of UK university history departments." - Source RHS Website