Hew Strachan Sir Hew Francis Anthony Strachan , DL , FRSE , FRHistS ( born 1 September 1949 in Edinburgh , Scotland ) is a Scottish military historian , well known for his work on the administration of the British Army and the history of the First World War . He is a brigadier and member of council of the Queen ' s Bodyguard for Scotland ( Royal Company of Archers ) . As a merchant seaman for three months in 1968 , Strachan worked his passage around the world on Ben Line Steamers Ltd . In 1973 , he worked as a member of a Sudan antiquities survey . He was educated at Rugby School , then Corpus Christi College , Cambridge with a B . A . , 1971 and M . A . 1975 . He was elected a research fellow of the college 1975 , and after a one year stint as senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy , Sandhurst in 1978 / 79 he returned to the college and became admissions tutor and then senior tutor . He has been a life fellow of the college since 1992 . His early work focused on the History of the British Army , and he was awarded the Templer Medal for " From Waterloo to Balaclava " and the Westminster Medal for " The Politics of the British Army " . Commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a history of the First World War to replace C . R . M . F Cruttwell ' s one - volume " A History of the Great War , 1914 - 1918 " , Strachan completed the first of three volumes , " " in 2001 to wide acclaim and is acknowledged as one of the world ' s authorities on the subject . Accompanying the print publication of his one volume survey " The First World War " ( 2004 ) was a multi - part documentary series for television entitled " The First World War " , with some episodes being titled after the chapters in the written work . This set was also released on DVD by Image Entertainment . Since 2004 he has been director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War , and has published a series of important articles on strategy , as well as editing books which have arisen from the project . Strachan is Chichele Professor of the History of War at All Souls College , Oxford . He was Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow from 1992 to 2000 . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Historical Society . He holds an honorary D . Univ from the University of Paisley . He was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Tweeddale in 2006 . He is a member of the Academic Advisory Panel of the Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies . In addition , he is on the Chief of the Defence Staff ' s strategic advisory panel , the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board , and is an advisory fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of North Texas . He was on the council of the National Army Museum and is currently a trustee of the Imperial War Museum . He is a visiting professor of the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy in Trondheim and in 2009 was the Sir Howard Kippenberger Professor at Victoria University Wellington . He was married to Catherine Margaret Blackburn and they had two children . He then married Pamela Symes and together they have a son . Strachan was knighted in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to the Ministry of Defence .