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016: Spring 1986
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021: Winter 1987
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036: Winter 1992
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047: September 1996
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Frederick George Scott: The Great War as I Saw It
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By F G Scott £16.99 (Amazon price), 327pp, Glossary, 1 map. ISBN: 978–077–354–425–3 Review by David Filsell (This review first appeared in edition 109 of The Western Front Association magazine Stand To!) First published in 1922, when F G Scott’s memories of war were fresh, his diaries and letters to hand, The Great War as I Saw It offers an …
Zero Hour Z Day 1st July 1916: XIII Corps Operations between Maricourt and Mametz
By Jonathan Porter Self–published, £30.00 hardback, £25.00 soft back, 500pp, ills, photographs and maps in monochrome and colour throughout, 1 Appendix, index. ISBN: 978–099–569–110–0 Review by David Filsell Starting a book review with superlatives is bad practice. It either indicates the work of an over impressed reviewer or, perhaps, one …
The German Army in the Offensives of 1917: Arras, the Aisne and Champagne
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By Jack Sheldon Pen and Sword 2015, £25.00, 384pp, 55 ills, 13 maps, notes and refs, 2 appendices (including selective biographical notes, bibliog, index. ISBN: 9– 781–783–463–459 Review by David Filsell This volume of Jack Sheldon’s highly–detailed series of books on the German Army in the Great War follows his usual effective model – employing…
Shell Shock – The Crisis
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By Taylor Downing Little Brown, 2016, £25.00, 399pp, 18 ills, 4 appendices, bibliog., 2 maps. ISBN: 9–781–408–706–619 Review by David Filsell Once, when asked what really interests the House of Commons, a MP is reputed to have said, ‘Buggery and badgers’. A wild simplification, yet, if one was to ask a similar question of a member of the genera…
Ypres 1914: Messines
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By Nigel Cave & Jack Sheldon Pen and Sword, Barnsley, £12.99, 214 pp ills 7 maps throughout, German Order of Battle, selected bibliog, index ISBN 178159201-2 Book review by David Filsell The actions around Messines in 1914 all too often take second place to events on and to the left of the Ypres Menin road in writing about First Ypres. Here…
‘Allies are a Tiresome Lot’: The British Army in the First World War
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By John Dillon Helion & Co Ltd, Solihull, £29.95, 221pp, 15 ills,4 maps bibliog, notes and refs, index ISBN 978-1-910777-32-9. Book Review by David Filsell This, the 12th in the ever excellent Wolverhampton Military Series, published by Helion, is another good overview of Britain’s relative poorly covered involvement the war on the Italian …
Kitchener’s New Army: Your Country Needs You
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By Edgar Wallace Book reviewe by David J Filsell Kitchener’s New Army: Your Country Needs You was republished by Amberly Publishing at £16.99 (and is now heavily discounted on line). Originally published in some six ‘episodes’ in 1915, it was the first major work on the recruitment and training of the K Divisions. Although there are newer books …
051: January 1998
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064: April 2002
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My Father's Son
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Book Review by David Filsell. When Earl Haig died suddenly in 1928, his nine-year-old son succeeded to the title. Such was his father's standing that an immense weight of personal obligation and national expectation immediately fell upon Dawyck Haig's shoulders. This, his memoir, first drafted some thirty years ago, provides a brief but perfectly…
Forgotten Victory
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Book Review by David Filsell. Although published last year, lack of a publisher's copy has sadly long delayed the review of Gary Sheffield's Forgotten Victory in Stand To! Fortunately, apart from his 'day job' - Warfare Historian on the Higher Command and Staff Course - he is well known through his regular, and effective, expositions of revision…
The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army
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Reviewed by David Filsell. In the last four years three new biographies of Douglas Haig have been published. Each, of the works helps mark the fact that the Field Marshal is being seen not as ‘butcher and bungler’ but as a figure of historical importance and deserving of sober unemotional analysis. Douglas Haig’s post-Great War reputation has fol…
Stand To! Online
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In 1982 a survey went out with Issue. No.5 of Stand To! It asked members what they were interested in. This list of ‘requests’ immediately fed into the content for the following decade and represents the exceptional broad range of material readers and researchers can enjoy. These are the items that interested readers then: Artillery War Artist…
Stand To! No.1 to No.133 Full Contents Listing
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Stand To! 1-133 Content Stand To 1 Spring 1981 Editorial Notes (Peter T. Scott) Serving members of the Western Front Association Early Days, New Paths and Acknowledgements Inaugural Meeting: John Terraine's Address. Historian John Terraine berates those who indulge in ‘purely tragic pilgrimages to the Western Front’. The Loving Care of the…
Rats Alley: Trench Names of the Western Front, 1914 – 1918
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Rats Alley: Trench Names of the Western Front, 1914 – 1918 The History Press £40.00, 767pp, 25 ills,24 1 bibliog., index ISBN 978 0 7509 8055 5 Peter Chasseaud On its first publication in 2006, what the marketing men call the ‘Unique Selling Point’ of Peter Chasseaud’s Rats Alley was simple. In listing the names over 10,000 named trenches on …
Publishers, Readers and the Great War: Literature and Memory since 1918
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Publishers, Readers and the Great War: Literature and Memory since 1918 £84, Bloomsbury Academic, 272pp, 15 ills -in page -index notes and refs, bibliog. ISBN 978 1 4742 9149 1 Vincent Trot Yes. Publishers, Readers and the Great War, is an academic work. Its price is academic and unfriendly. No doubt, sales to bejewelled libraries of universi…
African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa
African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa £20, Hurst Publishing, 448pp, no ills, 3 maps, no notes or refs, select bibliog. index. ISBN 978 1 84904 867 5. Robert Gaudi I do not normally read others’ reviews of books before writing my own and, although I do not have great regard for Allan Mallinson’s works on t…
Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good–bye to All That, 1895–1929
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By Jean Moorcroft Wilson Bloomsbury, £12.95, 460pp, 24 ills, list of abbreviations, notes, index. ISBN: 978–147–292–914–3 Prolific barely indicates the length and breadth of Robert Graves’ writing. The 2003 Penguin edition of his complete poems alone contains 837 pages and includes formerly un–published and posthumously published works. Since…
Pandora’s Box: A History of the Great War
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By Jörn Leonhard Harvard University Press, £20.62, 1,104 pp, 10 maps, in page ills, notes and refs, bibliog, index. ISBN: 978–067–454–511–3 At two and a quarter inches thick, with 65 pages of notes and references, a bibliography of some 200 pages and a 35–page index, Pandora’s Box appears daunting. Nevertheless, Jörn Leonhard, Professor History …
The Indian Army on the Western Front: India’s Expeditionary Force to France and Belgium in the First World War
Cambridge University Press, £60.00, 335pp., bibliog, index. ISBN: 9–781–107–027–466 To subvert a review about a new book with lengthy opinions on a fifteen–year–old work on the same topic is almost certainly poor reviewer’s protocol. However, since the shelf of new books about the Indian Army is virtually bare I will ignore polite convention. Lik…
Looking back on Stand To! Book Reviews
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David J. Filsell looks back on book reviews in Stand To! The Journal of The Western Front Association Some 1,070 or so reviews of books relating to the Great War have been published in the 120 or so editions of Stand To! in The Garrison Library. The first were in edition No.1 of the magazine which was published in April 1981 and edited by Peter …
Bushmills Heroes 1914 -1918 by Robert Thompson
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204pp, ills. £10.00 (2005 pricing) (Copies available from the author) ISBN 0- 9537583-3-8 by Robert Thompson [This review first appeared in Stand To! No. 73 April 2005] Now in its second edition, Bushmills Heroes, offers valuable memorial essays to some 90 or so men from the area killed during the Great War. The diligence of its author, editor…
When the Whistle Blows: The Story of the Footballers’ Battalion in the Great War by Andrew Riddoch and John Kemp
Haynes Publishing, Yeovil, £19.99 (price in 2011) 336pp, 87 ills, 3 appendices, bibliog, source notes, index. ISBN 978 1 84425 656 3 [This review first appeared in Stand To! No.90 December 2010/January 2011] Haynes Publishing - the extraordinary publisher of car maintenance manuals - Andrew Riddoch and John Kemp, football, the Great War - a s…
The Indian Army in the First World War Editor Alan Jeffreys
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Helion, £35.00, 313pp, Notes, refs, bibliog, index. ISBN: 978–191–151–278–3 Contributors include: Daniel Marston, Raymond Callaban, Rob Johnson, Graham Winton, Joseph Moretz, Adam Prime, Cat Wilson, David Omissi, Alan Jeffreys, Andrew Jarboe, Michael Creese, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Peter Stanley and Anirudh Deshpande. [This review first app…
War Books by David Filsell 2005
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War Books: A reflection on some contemporary views by David J. Filsell, for Stand To! No.74 September 2005 'Frightened of War Books' Although many books published in Britain during the Great War were propagandist, interest in 'war stories' remained at an extremely high level between 1914 and 1918. Only when the conflict ended did interest declin…
Beneath Flanders Fields: The Tunnellers' War 1914- 1918 by Peter Barton, Peter Doyle and Johan Vandewalle
Beneath Flanders Fields: The Tunnellers' War 1914- 1918 Peter Barton, Peter Doyle and Johan Vandewalle Spellmount. 304 pp. £25.00. ISBN 86227 237 9 [This review first appeared in the September 2005 edition of Stand To! No.74] Every so often a book arrives for review which really stands out. It may be the research, the illustrations, the qual…