Robert Conquest

"A strong and individual voice talking about things that matter" – Thom Gunn, Spectator

Robert Conquest is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and is best known for his influential works of Soviet history which include The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s.

Educated at Winchester College, the University of Grenoble, and Magdalen College, Oxford, Conquest was an exhibitioner in Modern History, studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He took his doctorate in Soviet history after joining the Communist Party in 1937, and then served in the British infantry during WWII and thereafter in His Majesty's Diplomatic Service, being awarded the Order of the British Empire. In 1996 he was named a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.

In addition to his scholarly and diplomatic work, Conquest was a major figure in the literary world. Along with Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, he was part of the prominent literary collective The Movement. In addition to his own works of fiction, poetry, literary criticism and translation, Conquest was  literary editor of The Spectator in 1962-3,  edited the seminal New Lines anthologies, and, with Amis, co-edited the first five issues of Spectrum , publishing stories by many of the world’s most influential science fiction authors. He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 1997, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Stanford, California.