ISBN: 9780226001616
Published by University of Chicago Press on May 1st 2013
Genres: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Military, World War I, Social Science, Lesbian Studies, Women's Studies
Pages: 288
Command and Morale: The British Army on the Western Front 1914-1918
ISBN: 9781781590218
Published by Pen & Sword Books Limited on March 1st 2014
Pages: 249
The Challenge of Battle: The Real Story of the British Army in 1914
ISBN: 9781849088596
Published by Osprey Publishing on February 20th 2014
Pages: 312
Featured Review
Author Adrian Gilbert’s introduction notes that: “British histories of the 1914 campaign typically adopt the emotionally comforting paradigm of the plucky Briton giving the overbearing foreign bully a bloody nose.” Gilbert goes on to state “…my intention is to look afresh at the British Army during 1914….My aim is not by any means to belittle the army’s many achievements but to provide a more realistic assessment of the army set within a general narrative of the war in 1914.”
Gilbert’s book succeeds admirably, and not as a revisionist work but rather as a corrective supplement to the controversial Official History of the First World War multi-volume series published between 1922 and 1948. Although the 1914 volumes of the Official History were not subject to as much debate as later books in the series, Gilbert still found “significant instances of evasion and omission, and, on occasion, outright distortion” in the 1914 volumes of the Official History.
For example, Gilbert’s research contradicts the official version of the battle of Le Cateau (26 August) as a successful delaying action fought against great odds. The author explains that such misrepresentations are important because the Official History was “so influential in defining the outlook of subsequent histories of the war.” As an example, Gilbert quotes historian John Terraine who described Le Cateau as “one of the most remarkable British feats of arms of the whole war.” Challenge of Battle devotes five detailed chapters to the preliminary maneuvers and decisions to fight at Le Cateau, the battle itself, “Failures of Command,” and the continuing retreat of the BEF. Gilbert’s book clearly proves that Le Cateau was a British tactical defeat, but it remains to be seen whether his new work can overcome well-established myths.
Dana Lombardy, Publisher WWOI
Behind the Front: British Soldiers and French Civilians
ISBN: 9780521837613
Published by Cambridge University Press on March 27th 2014
Genres: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Military, World War I
Pages: 480
Medium Mark A Whippet
ISBN: 9781782003984
Published by Osprey Publishing on May 20th 2014
Genres: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Great Britain, Weapons
Pages: 48
The Battleship HMS Dreadnought
ISBN: 8362878681
Published by Kagero Oficyna Wydawnicza on August 1st 2013
Pages: 69
A German Tommy: The Secret of a War Hero
ISBN: 9781783462742
Published by Pen & Sword Books on 2014
Genres: History, Military, World War I, Australia & New Zealand, Great Britain
Pages: 198
DH2 vs Albatross DI-DII Western Front 1916
ISBN: 9781849087049
Published by Osprey Publishing on 2012
Genres: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Great Britain, Aviation
Pages: 80
Somme Success: The Royal Flying Corps and the Battle of the Somme 1916
ISBN: 9781848848825
Published by Pen & Sword Books Limited on June 30th 2012
Genres: History, Europe, Great Britain, Military, World War I, Aviation
Pages: 223
Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution
ISBN: 1570034923
Published by University of South Carolina Press on September 1st 2002
Pages: 410
Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War in Britain
ISBN: 9780521831536
Published by Cambridge University Press on February 19th 2004
Pages: 333