'Home in time for the pheasant season' was the cheerful assumption of most British officers when the Army was shipped off to fight the Russians in 1854. But it was not to be. After landing in the Crimea and beating the Russians in open battle, the redcoats found themselves laying siege to the great naval base of Sebastopol. There, they endured a bitter winter in improvised positions, desperately short of supplies and with next to no medical care. Published to mark the 150th anniversary of the Crimean War, Julian Spilsbury's narrative is drawn from the diaries and letters of soldiers of this most famous Victorian army. From the initial landings in an exotic land to the battles, the long months of siege and the final victorious assault, the story unfolds through the words of the men - and women - who were there. We follow a cast of extraordinary characters who, one after another, fall, some to bounce back with almost superhuman resilience, others to die at the incompetent hands of the Army's surgeons. The Army's leading personalities are a collection of eccentrics; some were short-sighted, some downright criminal. But not one of them doubted the British would win, no matter how dire the odds - and this is why they ultimately prevailed.

The Thin Red Line: The Eyewitness History Of The Crimean War

History

Spilsbury, Julian

Military

Weidenfeld Nicolson Ltd

By 1857, the British East India Company was India’s de facto ruler, having won the subcontinent by subterfuge and force of arms. Discontent was rising however, and in the following Spring, entire regiments of Indian troops turned on their British overlords and challenged the global trading powerhouse in open warfare. The brutal struggle that followed would forever break the Company’s hold on India, and send shock waves reverberating across the British Empire. This sweeping, true-life drama combines powerful eyewitness accounts and painstaking historical investigation to present an intimate portrait of the British troops and the Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Afghan who fought alongside them, often against terrible odds. This is living history that reads like the finest action-adventure story!

The Indian Mutiny

Asia

A FORGOTTEN VOICES for Victoria's Redcoats

The Thin Red Line: The Eyewitness History of the Crimean War (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

Cassell

Night of the Bear

Literature & Fiction

Smethurst, William

Contemporary

Headline

By 1857, the British East India Company was India’s de facto ruler, having won the subcontinent by subterfuge and force of arms. Discontent was rising however, and in the following spring, entire regiments of Indian troops turned on their British overlords and challenged the global trading powerhouse in open warfare. The brutal struggle that followed would forever break the Company’s hold on India, and send shock waves reverberating across the British Empire. This sweeping, true-life drama combines powerful eyewitness accounts and painstaking historical investigation to present an intimate portrait of the British troops and the Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Afghans who fought alongside them, often against terrible odds. This is living history that reads like the finest action-adventure story!

Phoenix

Great Military Disasters: A History of Incompetence

Metro_Books

Great Military Disasters tells the dramatic stories behind the world's most calamitous conflicts. 
From the French army's failure to understand the impact of new technology at Crécy to Hitler's blatant overconfidence at Stalingrad, military historian Julian Spilsbury provides thrilling accounts of each disaster, covering exactly what went wrong, how and why. Of course, a disastrous outcome for one side meant victory for another, so as well as exploring the reasons the conflict ended in disaster, Great Military Disasters also reveals the key to victory. Eyewitness quotations add another dimension to this intriguing study of human incompetence of the gravest kind.

Great Military Disasters: From Bannockburn to Stalingrad

Quercus Publishing

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Books by Spilsbury, Julian