Dennis Deletant

Dennis Deletant OBE
Dennis Deletant in 2019
Born	(1946-03-05) March 5, 1946 (age 78) Norfolk County, England, United Kingdom[1]
Citizenship	British, Romanian[1]
Occupation	Historian
Awards	Order of the British Empire National Order of Merit (Romania), Commander rank Order of the Star of Romania, Officer rank
Academic background
Alma mater	University of London
Academic work
Institutions	UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies Georgetown University

Dennis Deletant OBE (born 5 March 1946^[2]) is a British-Romanian historian of the history of Romania. As of 2019, he is Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University and Emeritus Professor of Romanian Studies at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). He is the author of numerous works on the history of Romania including Ceaușescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-89 (London; New York, 1996); Romania under Communist Rule (Bucharest, 1998); Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965 (London; New York, 1999); and Ion Antonescu: Hitler's Forgotten Ally (London: New York, 2006).^[3]

Deletant had been persona non grata in Ceaușescu's Romania, but on 31 December 1989, in the immediate aftermath of the Romanian Revolution—there was still some sniper fire, etc.—Deletant entered Romania at Giurgiu as the only Romanian-language speaker in a BBC crew coming in from Bulgaria, joining another BBC team already in Bucharest and, in what he was later to describe as his Warholian "fifteen minutes of fame," reported on the subsequent events.^[4]