There was no doubt that in the early and mid-eighties that many of us in broadsheet newspapers felt that we still had a responsibility to try to protect the Royal Family or if you like protect the Monarchy from the assaults of the media.

Hastings was the first journalist to enter the liberated Port Stanley during the 1982 Falklands War. Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society. In 2010 he received the Royal United Services Institute's Westminster Medal for his 'lifelong contribution to military literature' and the same year the Edgar Wallace Award from the London Press Club.

Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings FRSL FRHistS (born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist editor historian and author.