© Patrick Bishop
Patrick Bishop is a writer and foreign correspondent.
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Have You Read?
Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket
The bestselling history of the British soldier from 1700 to 1900, a period in which methods of warfare and the social make-up of the British army changed little, and in which the Empire was forged.
Wellington: The Iron Duke
The exhilarating story of Britain’s greatest ever soldier. The Duke of Wellington’s remarkable life and audacious campaigns are vividly recreated in this compelling book.
The First World War in Photographs
An astonishing and moving collection of images form the archives of the Imperial War Museum.
The Western Front
Richard Holmes captures the scale and intensity of the Great War in this heartfelt and gripping account of the bloodiest days of the First World War.
War Walks: From Agincourt to Normandy
For centuries, battles have raged over the area of Belgium and Northern France known as the ‘fatal avenue’. In War Walks, Richard Holmes explores six of the region’s most intriguing battlefields, vividly recreating the atmosphere of their bloody history.
Battlefields of the Second World War
A compelling study of the major campaigns of the Second World War: Monte Cassino, El Alamein, Operation Market Garden and the RAF’s bomber offensive against Germany. Using letters and the diaries of soldiers, Richard Holmes recreates what it was like to be involved in such bloody and brutal conflicts.
If You Loved This, You Might Like…
Forgotten Voices of the Great War: A New History of WWI in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There
Max Arthur
A rich and moving record of First World War memories carefully compiled from the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum. This book evokes the scale of human experience within the conflict through the voices of those who lived it.
The First World War: A New History
Hew Strachan
An arresting, accessible and utterly convincing account of the Great War, and how it shaped the century that followed it, from one of the world’s foremost experts. Exploring such theatres as the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and Africa, Strachan takes a uniquely global view of what is often misconceived as a prolonged skirmish on the Western Front.
The War Poems
Siegfried Sassoon
An extraordinary testimony to the almost unimaginable experiences of a First World War combatant, this moving collection of poems explores the author’s experiences as a soldier during the war, unforgettably evoking the horrors of that bitter and bloody conflict.
War Poems of Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
When Wilfred Owen died in 1918, just one week before the Armistice, only five of his poems had been published. Now perhaps the most celebrated of the First World War poets, his work searingly evokes the horrors of daily life in the ‘seventh hell’ of the trenches.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
Published in 1929, this classic First World War novel is a German author’s masterful depiction – through the persona of a young, unknown soldier – of the lives of a generation of men who, though they may have escaped its shells, were ultimately destroyed by the war. Based on his own experience as a young infantryman in the German army during World War I, the book was banned in Nazi Germany and Remarque was forced into exile in 1930.
FILM
Gallipoli
Acclaimed as one of Australia’s finest cinematic achievements, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli is an extraordinarily moving anti-war film which centres on two young men caught up in the murderous battle for Gallipoli during the First World War. Their spirited youthfulness, thirst for adventure, and the exuberant mateship they share underlines the awful betrayal of the conflict. In the harrowing conclusion, Weir shows how quickly and pointlessly young lives can be destroyed.
Praise
From the reviews of Tommy:
‘Indispensable for anyone who wants to understand what the life of a soldier on the Western Front was really like … Authoritative … Among the many virtues of his book, Holmes deploys a wonderful range of unfamiliar sources and voices. He captures the smell of the trenches, a mingling of “burnt and poisoned mud, and the stink of corrupting human flesh” … Holmes’s book is full of good sense, yet never skimps the reality of the horrors’
MAX HASTINGS, Daily Mail
‘What sets Richard Holmes apart is the sheer quality of his writing and his empathy with his subjects … Holmes’s compassion for the men who endured and died movingly underpins the book … Powerful reading. Tommy will stand as a classic of First World War history’
Independent
‘Compelling … This is excellent popular history: scholarly, highly readable and utterly absorbing’
Daily Telegraph
‘Tommy is Richard Holmes at his impressive best’
BERNARD CORNWELL, Evening Standard
‘Tommy tells it as it really was … Every page of this is worth reading’
Time Out
‘A serious work of scholarship that is also eminently readable and utterly fascinating. It is perhaps the finest book on the First World War that I have ever read’
SIMON HEFFER, Country Life
‘First-rate, with enough breadth and detail to sway anyone who feels there is nothing more they need to know about the First World War … Rich and thoughtful’
Independent on Sunday
‘Closely argued and objective … Tommy, a lively and carefully constructed antidote to received wisdom and blinkered prejudice, makes a calm and important contribution to reclaiming the true historical character and memory of Britain’s finest military achievement’
TLS
‘A compelling picture of the soldier’s lot, from general to private … Through the accumulation of detail and experience, it examines minutely the everyday experience of trench life’
Observer
‘[A] lively volume, packed with amazing facts and arresting anecdotes … a cornucopia of knowledge’
Sunday Express
‘There’s no shortage of harrowing detail in the vivid first-hand testimony marshalled here, but there’s philosophy, humour, camaraderie and excitement too’
Scotsman
ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES
In order of publication
The English Civil War (with Brigadier Peter Young)
The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French
Soldiers (with John Keegan)
Firing Line
The Road to Sedan
Fatal Avenue
Riding the Retreat
War Walks
War Walks II
The Western Front
The Second World War in Photographs
The First World War in Photographs
Oxford Companion to Military History (general editor)
Battlefields of the Second World War
Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket
Wellington: The Iron Duke
In the Footsteps of Churchill
Dusty Warriors: Modern Soldiers at War
Marlborough: England’s Fragile Genius
Shots from the Front: The British Soldier 1914–18
Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914
Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors
COPYRIGHT
HarperPress
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2004
Copyright © Richard Holmes 2004
PS section copyright © Patrick Bishop 2005
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publisher
s Ltd
Richard Holmes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-38348-1
Some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.
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