Centenary News Review: ‘ Although The Great War is perhaps better suited to readers with a clear interest in the First World War, it is a gripping, confident novel which is both entertaining and surprising. It is fast-paced, full of movement, and compels you to carry on as the narration moves forward, chapter by chapter, through each year of the war.’
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Publisher’s Description: ‘In her prize-winning first novel, Zennor in Darkness, Helen Dunmore reimagines the plight of D.H. Lawrence and his German wife hiding out in Cornwall during the First World War.Spring, 1917, and war haunts the Cornish coastal village of Zennor: ships are being sunk by U-boats, strangers are treated with suspicion, and newspapers are full of spy stories.’
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Publisher’s Description:’Parade’s End is the story of Christopher Tietjens and his progress from the secure world of Edwardian England into the First World War and beyond. Tietjens embodies the values of that ordered, predictable, hierarchic society of pre-1914. Contrasted with him and portrayed with equal clarity and depth is his wife Sylvia–beautiful, arrogant, reckless–a symbol of the new times. Their conflict, the chronicle of a family and of an era, makes Parade’s End both a gripping study of character and a work of amazing subtlety and depth.’
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Publisher’s Description:’In The Good Soldier Svejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hasek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.’
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Publisher’s Description:’To this day, Turkey regards the victory as a defining moment in its history, a heroic last stand in the defence of the Ottoman Empire. But, counter-intuitively, it would come to signify something perhaps even greater for the defeated allies, in particular the Australians and New Zealanders: the birth of their countries’ sense of nationhood. Now, in the year that marks its centenary, the Gallipoli campaign (commemorated each year on 25 April, Anzac Day), resonates with significance as the origin and symbol of Australian and New Zealand identity.’
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Publisher’s Description:’Drawing on unpublished personal accounts by individuals at all levels and from all sides – not only from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, but unusually from Turkey and France too – Peter Hart combines his trademark eye for vivid personal stories with a strong narrative to bring a modern view of this military disaster to a popular audience.’
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Publisher’s Description:’Gallipoli remains one of the most poignant battlefronts of the First World War and L. A. Carlyon’s monumental account of that campaign has been rightfully acclaimed and a massive bestseller in Australia. Brilliantly told, supremely readable and deeply moving, Gallipoli brings this epic tragedy to life and stands as both a landmark chapter in the history of the war and a salutary reminder of all that is fine and all that is foolish in the human condition.’
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Publisher’s Description:’This study tackles key questions about just how the history of any given event comes to be written in a certain way and how very different versions of an event can compete for attention. Often one particular version holds the field drowning out its rivals. The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 serves as an excellent case study through which the process of ‘making history’ can be observed.’
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Publisher’s Description:’First published in 1956, Alan Moorehead’s book is still regarded as the definitive work on this tragic episode of the Great War. One could argue he was the first writer to capture the true turmoil that occurred in this campaign with his colourful, analytical and compelling style of prose.’
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Publisher’s Description:’Eugene Rogan’s remarkable new book recreates one of the most important but poorly understood fronts of the First World War. Despite fighting back with great skill and ferocity against the Allied onslaught, the Ottomans were ultimately defeated, clearing the way for the making, for better or worse, of a new Middle East which has endured to the present.
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