Hudson, Miles (Matthew Lee) 1925-

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HUDSON, Miles (Matthew Lee) 1925-

PERSONAL: Born August 17, 1925, in Belfast, Northern Ireland; son of Charles Edward (a soldier) and Gladys (Lee) Hudson; married Mercedes Shaw, May 19, 1956; children: Mark, Veronica, Peter, Richard. Education: Trinity College, Oxford, M.A., 1949.

ADDRESSES: Home—Priors Farm, Reading Road, Mattingley, Hook, Hampshire RG27 8JU, England.

CAREER: British Army, career officer, 1943-64, retiring as lieutenant colonel; in charge of Rhodesian affairs for the Conservative Research Department, England, 1964-67, Lead of overseas department, 1967-70; political secretary to the British Foreign secretary, Sir Alec Douglas, 1970-74; farmer in Basingstoke, England, 1974—. Secretary of Hansard Commission for Electoral Reform, 1976; director of Conservative Group for Europe, 1977; member of Boyd Commission, 1979.

AWARDS, HONORS: Officer of Order of the British Empire.

WRITINGS:

Triumph or Tragedy: Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1981.

(With John Stanier) War and the Media: A RandomSearchlight, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Assassination, Sutton, 2000.

Intervention in Russia, 1918-1920: A Cautionary Tale, Leo Cooper, 2004.

ADAPTATIONS: Assassination has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean.

SIDELIGHTS: Miles Hudson brings his experience as a soldier in the British army and as a diplomat to bear in his writings about military affairs. In War and the Media: A Random Searchlight, written with John Stanier, Hudson examines both the positive and negative roles played by the media in times of war. He believes the media should be a kind of watchdog to the military. In the Crimean War, Hudson explains in his study, reports in the London Times documenting shortcomings in how the military was handling medical and management problems led to a major reorganization of the army for the better. But modern-day media tend to be run by commercial interests who put the size of their audience above all other considerations, including the safety or effectiveness of the nation's troops. Eliot A. Cohen, reviewing War and the Media in Foreign Affairs, found that "the treatment of the press is often patronizing. Still, those in the world of journalism may find this a useful view from the other side of the hill." John J. Smee in the Political Science Quarterly thought that the book "offers media practitioners, politicians, and the military a sober, balanced view of how all three groups act and interact in war situations."

In Assassination Hudson looks at the most infamous political assassinations of the past two thousand years and wonders what effect they had, if any, on the course of history. Focusing on those assassinations done purely for political reasons and where the motives of the killers are known, Hudson chronicles a wide range of effects. He concludes that assassination cannot actually change history, but it can speed up or slow down inherent tendencies already at work in a society. "Hudson," wrote Jay Freeman in Booklist, "has provided a thoughtful and stimulating look at an old question."