The BBC puts Hastings in its list of leading ten WW1 historians.
He has presented historical documentaries for the BBC.
In 2012 he was awarded the US$100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award, a lifetime achievement award for military writing, which includes an honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation.
Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Historical Society.

Opinion of another historian Nigel Jones.
" Hastings's recent massive volumes on his specialist subject, the Second World War, have shown why his position as Britain's leading military historian is now unassailable. They demonstrate not only his always formidable grasp of the nuts and bolts of logistics and strategy and an authoritative narrative sweep, but a new humane note of empathy not always present in military history, or indeed in his early works.
In this enormously impressive new book, Hastings effortlessly masters the complex lead-up to and opening weeks of the First World War. As a historian,"