on the advisory board of the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University. On 20 May 2014, Strachan was appointed as Lord Lieutenant of Tweeddale, in succession to Captain David Bingham Younger. In 2015, he left Oxford to serve as professor of international relations at the University of St Andrews. Research Strachan's early research and published work focussed on the history of the British Army, and he was awarded the Templer Medal for From Waterloo to Balaclava and the Westminster Medal for The Politics of the British Army. Commissioned by the Oxford University Press to write a history of the First World War to replace C. R. M. F. Cruttwell's one-volume A History of the Great War, 1914-1918, Strachan completed the first of three volumes, The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms in 2001 to wide acclaim and is acknowledged as one of the world's authorities on the subject. Accompanying the print publication of his one volume survey The First World War (2004) was a multi-part documentary series for television entitled The First World War, with some episodes being titled after the chapters in the written work. This set was also released on DVD by Image Entertainment. According to Jonathan Boff, he became "the most influential British historian of the First World War of his generation." He broke through traditional intra-disciplinary boundaries and national borders. He tirelessly encouraged others, both inside academia and out. His impact produces histories of the Great War that are global and multi-dimensional, while rooted in the detail of military operations. The results exemplify the new military historiography. Strachan is editor of the Great Battles series published by Oxford University Press. Views In January 2014, Strachan told The Daily Beast that President Barack Obama's failures in Afghanistan and Syria have shown that he is "chronically incapable" of military strategy. He said, "Bush may have had totally fanciful political objectives in terms of trying to fight a global War on Terror, which was inherently astrategic, but at least he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do in the world. Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world." Awards and honours In 2005 Strachan was bestowed with the Honorary degree of Doctor of the University (D.Univ) from the University of Paisley. He was knighted in the 2013 New Years Honours List for services to the Ministry of Defence.