Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield: Exceptional Tales from the Battlefield - Hardcover

Hastings, Max

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000719756X ISBN 13: 9780007197569

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2005

Synopsis

An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen ‘warriors’ from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Max Hastings.

Over the course of forty years writing about war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) – and by their practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from different nationalities in modern history – including Napoleon’s ‘blessed fool’ Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early 19th century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who became the hero of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu wars; Captain Karl von Muller of the light cruiser Emden whose predations in the South China Sea on behalf of the German Imperial Navy in World War I earned him the title of ‘the gentleman of war’; the Australian-born man of letters Frederic Manning whose account of trench warfare, Her Privates We, is unrivalled; Squadron Leader Guy Gibson, the ‘dam buster’ whose heroism in the skies of World War II earned him the nation’s admiration but few friends and various other assorted combatants.

Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be – and how it has changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for gallantry – and why it is that so often the most successful warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men.

About this title

Review:

'A compelling history of a forgotten aspect of our maritime history...also a superb piece of writing' -- TLS

'A damn good war story is always worth repeating, and few tell them better than Hastings' -- Mail on Sunday

'Bathurst...has opened a magic casement on to a lost world on the edge of living memory' -- Independent on Sunday

'His brisk prose has the qualities of his warriors: clear, decisive, forceful...WARRIORS will enthrall everyone' -- Daily Telegraph

'Warriors is a timely reminder of how magnificently people can behave in war.' -- Michael Rose, The Field

'all (of the stories) are corking...his virtues are clarity and decisiveness' -- The Spectator

'grimly fascinating' -- The Economist

About the Author:

Max Hastings is the author of twenty-six books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, then editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes both for journalism and his books, of which the most recent are All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe and The Secret War, best-sellers translated around the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London and was knighted in 2002. He has two grown-up children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 000719756X
• ISBN 13: 9780007197569
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416