Ben Shephard

Media and Research Career

Ben Shephard studied modern history at University College Oxford, being awarded a B.A. in 1970. For two decades he made documentaries for British television and was a producer on Thames Television’s the World at War series, interviewing among others Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz and Sir Arthur Harris. He was also a producer on Channel Four’s The Writing on the Wall and WGBH’s The Nuclear Age. Since 1994 he has been a freelance writer specialising in military and medical history.

He has held visiting fellowships at Yale University and New York University. In 2006 he gave the Lees Knowles Lectures on Military History at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow in the Leverhulme Changing Character of War programme at the University of Oxford. He writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement and The Literary Review.

He was elected an ESRI Research Fellow in June 2008.

Research Interests

Ben Shephard’s main interests are military and medical history. His book A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994 has attracted much critical acclaim in both the United Kingdom and the United States; it was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape and in the US by Harvard University Press. He has also written Kitty and the Prince, part of which takes place in Salford in the late nineteenth century. He is currently working on an account of the displaced persons crisis, 1945-1951.

Principal Publications

Books

After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen (Jonathan Cape: London, 2006).

Kitty and the Prince (Profile Books: London, 2003).

A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914-1994 (Jonathan Cape: London, 2000).

Book Chapters

‘The medical relief effort at Belsen’, in S. Bardgett & D. Cesarani (eds.), Belsen 1945: New Historical Perspectives (London, 2006).

‘Risk factors and PTSD – A Historian’s Perspective’, in Gerald Rosen(ed.), Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies (Chichester, 2004).

‘The rise of the trauma culture’, in J. E. Hovens & G. J. van der Ploeg (eds.), De Historia van de Psychiatrie als Basis voor de Toekomst (Rotterdam, 2002).

‘Shell-shock’, in H. Freeman (ed.), A Century of Psychiatry (London, 1999).

‘“The early treatment of mental disorders“: R. G. Rows and Maghull, 1914-1918’, in H. Freeman & G. E. Berrios (eds.), 150 Years of British Psychiatry. Volume II: The Aftermath (London, 1996).

‘Showbiz imperialism: the case of Peter Lobengula’, in J. M. Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, 1986).

Articles

‘”Becoming Planning Minded”: The Theory and Practice of Relief, 1940-1945’, Journal of Contemporary History, 43 (July 2008), pp. 405-419.

‘“Pitiless psychology“: the role of prevention in British military psychiatry in the Second World War’, History of Psychiatry, 10 (1999), pp. 491-524.

‘Shell shock on the Somme’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, June 1996.

Contact

Ben Shepherd is a Research Fellow in the Centre for European Security and can be contacted via the Centre.