Book description
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 of 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; and 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.
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. 'With this collection, Hastings is back on
home territory, where he can bring his unique blend of skills as war
reporter, and social as well as military historian to bear…This is one
of the best and most diverting of his shorter pieces' Evening Standard
'All (of the stories) are corking…opinions are stated firmly and with
big bold swings of the pendulum. His virtues are clarity and
decisiveness - greatly to be admired when it comes to making clear, for
the lay reader, roughly what is going on in the fiendishly complex and
bloody engagements he describes.' Spectator
'A wonderfully eclectic selection…Hastings has written a marvellous
book. Wry perceptive and engaging, it lays bare the curious mix of
character traits - good and bad - that a successful warrior requires.'
Sunday Telegraph
'His brisk prose has the qualities of his warriors: clear, decisive,
forceful…“Warriors” will enthral everyone.' Daily Telegraph
'Brilliant…Hastings combines his consummate skill as a writer with
passages of descriptive brilliance to provide a book for the ordinary
citizen…He captures the commitment of the fighting servicemen and
women…in language that is powerful yet eminently comprehensible. This is
a book to entertain.' Sunday Times Max Hastings studied at
Charterhouse and Oxford and became a foreign correspondent, reporting
from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London
Evening Standard. He has won many awards for his journalism. Among his
bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and
both Overlord and Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book
of the Year Prize. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of
the Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. A
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he now lives in Berkshire.
His most recent book 'Nemesis' is published October 2007.
