Alex Danchev obituary

Historian and biographer who explored the political and ethical force of artThe historian and biographer Alex Danchev, who has died aged 60 from a heart attack, believed that it was artists rather than politicians who had the power to change society.Danchev made his name as a military historian, with acclaimed biographies of Oliver Franks (1993) and Basil Liddell Hart (1998), and a co-edition of the unexpurgated war diaries of Lord Alanbrooke (2001). More recently, artists had become his focus,