Search results for ""author julian spilsbury""
Quercus Publishing Great Military Disasters: From Bannockburn to Stalingrad
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.
£12.99
Orion Publishing Co The Indian Mutiny
An epic true story of treachery, revenge and courageThe Indian Mutiny is a real page-turner, an epic story with surprising modern parallels. Fomer army officer-turned-TV scriptwriter, Julian Spilsbury is the ideal author to take us back to the desperate summer of 1857 when thousands of Indian soldiers mutinied. They murdered their officers, hunted down the women and children and burned and slaughtered their way to Delhi. The tiny British garrison at Lucknow held out against all odds; the one at Cawnpore surrendered only to be betrayed and massacred.Modern Indian accounts call this 'the first war of liberation', but as Julian Spilsbury reveals, 80 per cent of the so-called 'British' forces were from the sub-continent. Sikhs, Gurkhas and Afghans fought alongside small numbers of British soldiers. Together, they faced terrible odds and won. In the process they created a new army that would play a vital role in the Allied forces in both World Wars. Julian Spilsbury weaves the story together from some of the most vivid eyewitness accounts ever written. From the women and children hiding from blood-crazed mobs, to the epic battles that decided the campaign, to the grisly revenge exacted by the British forces, this is a gripping recreation of the greatest crisis of Empire.
£10.30
Orion Publishing Co The Thin Red Line: An eyewitness history of the Crimean War
A FORGOTTEN VOICES for Victoria's RedcoatsThe Crimean War was the first 'modern' war for the British forces: journalists reported home via the telegraph, a device that also tempted the government to micro-manage the war from the comfort of Whitehall. It is most famous for the charge of the Light Brigade, celebrated in poetry and film as a classic British military disaster. It also gave us 'The Thin Red Line', when a handful of British infantry saw off a horde of Russian cavalry.It was the first war in which ordinary British soldiers recorded their experiences - and Julian Spilsbury brings their story to life, together with the very different world of their officers and assorted mistresses. The army in the Crimea was a microcosm of Victorian society with all its strengths and weaknesses.
£12.99
