Phil Craig is a British historian, author and award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work concentrates particularly on Britain, the British Empire and the Second World War. He studied History at Cambridge University and began his broadcasting career as a BBC graduate trainee before working on programmes including World in Action and Panorama. He later held senior positions at Brook Lapping, Channel 4, Discovery Channel and ABC Television in Australia, where he oversaw factual programming including projects marking the ANZAC centenary. Craig’s approach to history grew directly from documentary filmmaking: he places particular emphasis on eyewitness testimony, personal papers and individual experiences, using them to tell large military and political stories through the people who lived through them.
Several of Craig’s major books were written with historian Tim Clayton. Finest Hour examines Britain in 1940, including Dunkirk, the threat of invasion and the Battle of Britain, while End of the Beginning continues the story into 1942, when the war stretched from North Africa and the Mediterranean to Russia and the Far East. Their Trafalgar: The Men, the Battle, the Storm reconstructs Nelson’s 1805 victory through the experiences of sailors and officers as well as the wider naval campaign. Craig’s more recent 1945: The Reckoning: War, Empire and the Struggle for a New World looks beyond the conventional ending of the Second World War to the upheavals of 1945, including the collapse of European empires, political violence and the emergence of a new international order. His books are narrative non-fiction, combining military history with biography, eyewitness evidence and the broader political consequences of war.
