Corelli Barnett

Correlli Douglas Barnett CBE FRHistS FRSL FRSA (born 28 June 1927) is an English military historian, who has also written works of economic history, particularly on the United Kingdom's post-war "industrial decline".

Barnett was born on 28 June 1927 in Norbury, County Borough of Croydon, the son of Douglas and Kathleen Barnett. He was educated at Trinity School of John Whitgift in Croydon and then Exeter College, Oxford where he gained a second class honours degree in Modern History with his special subject being Military History and the Theory of War, gaining an MA in 1954.

Barnett later said: "I can safely say there were only two books that I read at Oxford which strongly influenced my subsequent approach – one part of the Special Subject, and the other something which a friend recommended to me. The first was Clausewitz's On War, which was part of a Special Subject on military history and the theory of war. The other was Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization – if I read it again now I do not know what I would think of it, but certainly that was a starting point for my interest in looking at history in technological terms rather than in the constitutional/political terms prevalent at Oxford".

From 1945 to 1948 he served in the British Army in Palestine as a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps.

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