Keegan was innate within Clapham, the boy of Irish Catholics. He was educated at Wimbledon College for two years, so entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1953. He worked at a American Embassy in London for two years.

Around 1960 he was appointed to a lectureship at Sandhurst, a post he held for Twenty-six years. Within 1986 he moved to the Daily Telegraph to take higher a post of Defence Correspondent.

Within 1998 he wrote and presented a BBC's Reith Lectures, entitled War and My Globe.

He was knighted within 2000.

Frank C. Mahncke, a US defense analyst writing for the Naval War College, says of Keegan, "He is among the most prominent and widely read military historians of the late twentieth century" [http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2000/spring/br13-sp0.htm].

Keegan is admired for his ability to last beyond the traditional content of military history around research of a deeper understanding of war. His works deal with a case of a single soldier, a historical drives of armed forces cases, a role of technical vary within warfare, & the options & quandary faced by military leaders. Rather numerous historiographer, Keegan became entangled in the David Irving controversy, and was criticized for occasionally comments which seemed pro-Irving. Keegan praised Irving's ability to locate, however as well criticized Irving's distortions & thought certain of his ideas "perverse."

Despite existence the armed services historiographer & lecturer, Keegan has never been in the military or even seen combat himself due to childhood malady, an irony he discusses in the introduction of the total of his works.

Books

A Face of Battle (London, 1976) ISBN 00670304328 Six Armies around Normandy (1982) ISBN 0140052933 A Mask of Command (London, 1987) ISBN 0712665269 A Price of Admiralty (1988) ISBN 0091737710 A 2nd Globe War (Viking Press, 1990) ISBN 0670823597 The History of Warfare (London, 1993) ISBN 0679730826 A Battle for History: Refighting Globe War 2 (Vintage), 1996) ISBN 0679767436 Fields of Battle: A Wars for Northerly United states of america (1997) ISBN 0679746641 War & My Globe: A Reith Lectures 1998 (London: Pimlico, 1999) ISBN 0375705201 A Book of War (ed.) (Viking Press, 1999) ISBN 0670888044 A Number 1 Globe War (Future York: Knopf, 1999) ISBN 0375400524 Winston Churchill (2002) ISBN 0670030791 Intelligence within War: Noesis of the Enemy from either Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (2003) ISBN 0375400532 A Iraq War (2004) ISBN 0091800188