Military History Club Podcast · Saul David

Eleo Gordon

·48 min·3 clips

John Keegan’s Sunday Times review pushed Stalingrad and ended with, "Antony Beaver should write Berlin next."

1. Military History Club Podcast features Saul David and editor Elio Gordon discussing military-history publishing and her 50-year editorial career. 2. Saul David is the host and author; Elio Gordon is the guest editor who worked on his books and edited military history for Penguin. 3. The episode asks how a non-fiction editor shapes military-history books, chooses subjects, and rescues manuscripts from problems. 4. Gordon says her military interest came from a family background, including a father who was a regular soldier and served in the war. 5. She remembers reading a Sunday Express double-page spread on the Battle of the River Plate at age 11. 6. Dennis Winter’s Death's Men arrived as seven handmade albums with handwritten text and pasted photographs. 7. Gordon says John Keegan called Death's Men one of the early classics of history seen through soldiers’ eyes. 8. Lynn McDonald’s books drew on the Sand archives at the Imperial War Museum and the BBC, using soldiers’ reminiscences. 9. Gordon says she used champagne and smoked salmon to win over Lynn McDonald when the author was difficult. 10. Saul David says Lynn McDonald’s books shaped his own interest in oral history and military history. 11. Gordon explains that Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad began as an idea she raised after seeing a film and wanting a better treatment of the battle. 12. Beevor and agent Andrew Nuremberg initially rejected Stalingrad because Beevor said he did not speak Russian. 13. Gordon says the initial print-run planning assumed only about 2,500 copies, and the first subscription came to 3,600. 14. John Keegan’s Sunday Times review became the turning point and ended with a suggestion that Beevor should write Berlin next. 15. Gordon says Berlin required trimming because there was already enough brutality, rape, and pillage for several books. 16. Saul David describes how Gordon later suggested Zulu, calling Rorke’s Drift iconic and visually strong. 17. Gordon says her editorial job extended beyond manuscripts into publicity, marketing, rights, art, and picture research. 18. She describes being brutally honest with authors, including telling Saul David that an early version of a manuscript was not good enough. 19. Listeners interested in military-history publishing, book editing, and author-editor relationships will get the most from this conversation. 20. Listeners wanting combat narratives without publishing-industry detail may skip it.

As heard by us

A conversation about military history, editorial judgment, and how Stalingrad changed the market.

Elio Gordon reads as a seasoned military-history editor with a background in serious non-fiction, and the episode makes plain how much judgment goes into shaping a manuscript as well as weighing it.

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Why you'd press play

You want the editor's view behind the military history books that helped put the genre on the map.

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