A former Head of BBC TV History programmes, Laurence has specialized in writing books and making television documentaries about World War Two, the Nazis and Stalinism for thirty years. He won a BAFTA and a Peabody for his TV series 'The Nazis: A Warning from History' and a British Book Award for his book on Auschwitz, which is also the world's best selling book on this notorious camp. His book 'the Holocaust: A New History' was described by the Times as 'exemplary' and by the Daily Telegraph as 'the best single volume account of the atrocity ever written'. Educated at Oxford University, for several years he was a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics, London University. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Sheffield and the Open University. Professor Robert Service, of Oxford University, described Rees as 'one of the world's experts on the Second World War'. Sir Max Hastings wrote in the Sunday Times, in a review of Laurence Rees' 'World War Two: Behind Closed Doors' that 'Rees knows a vast amount about the Second World War and his judgments can seldom be faulted.'