Author:Will Davies
'Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - fire! Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it as if the world is spliting apart...'
On 7th June 1917, nineteen massive mines exploded beneath Messines Ridge near Ypres. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that point shattered the landscape and smashed open the German lines. Ten thousand German soldiers died.
Two of the mines - at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar - were fired by men of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, comprising miners and engineers rather than parade-ground soldiers. Drawing on the diaries of one of the key combatants, Benealth Hill 60 tells the little-known, devastatingly brutal true story of this subterranean war waged beneath the Western Front - a stygian battle-ground where men drowned in viscous chalk, suffocated in the blue gray clay, choked on poisonous air or died in the darkness, caught up up in vicious hand-to-hand fighting...
Graphic and chilling. This excellent book paints a little-known and frightening picture of a continent in the embrace of lawlessness and chaos
—— Ian KershawMoving, measured and provocative
—— Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday TimesSavage Continent is a powerful and disturbing book, painstakingly researched and written with both authority and an impressive historical sweep
—— James HollandGrimly absorbing, conveys the pity of war and its sorry aftermath with integrity and proper sympathy
—— Ian Thomson , Sunday TelegraphExtraordinary, disturbing and powerful ... it is to Lowe's great credit that he resists the temptation to sit in moral judgment ... it is time we acknowledged the hidden realities of perhaps the darkest chapter in all human history
—— Daily MailExtraordinary...exceptional...reveals a continent where moral values were often missing and basically lawlessness prevailed for several years
—— Trevor James , The HistorianImpressive and heart-rendering study...Lowe marshals all the elements of the story with cool even-handedness, especially where statistics are concerned, and explains how subsequent generations have manipulated the historical record to suit their own purposes, either to diminish their guilt or demonise others.
—— Christopher Silvester , Daily ExpressAn excellent account...Lowe's vivid descriptions of Europeans scrambling for scraps of food, rampant theft and 'destruction of morals' are a timely reminder that a certain humility is in order when we look at less fortunate continents today.
—— Brendan Simms , The IndependentA major new historical talent has arrived... a brilliantly organised and scrupulously objective survey of a continent on the floor
—— BBC History MagazineBrilliant
—— SunSavage Continent is a blood-soaked thing, charting the continued fanaticism and brutality that emerged from the ashes of war and wracked this sad continent long after Nazism was defeated
—— Telegraph, Christmas Round-upAn unforgettably gritty and blood-soaked book. Makes for deeply harrowing reading
—— Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday Times, Books of the Year 2012The chaotic interlude between the second world war and Europe's 'cold peace' in the 1950s receives brilliant treatment in Lowe's scrupulously objective book
—— Financial Times, "Books of the Year"An outstanding and important book, compelling and deeply troubling
—— Peter Eade , Country LifeA hybrid of history and multiple biography, movingly chronicles the women's ordeal... [it] bears eloquent witness to the moral and material ruin of collaborationist in France
—— Ian Thomson , SevenA remarkable achievement of biographical and oral research and with a brilliant narrative and description
—— History TodayA highly fractured tale intended to resemble the crumbling nature of Money’s existence post war. Nothing is over-laboured. Each word resounds with sultry, heat-oppressive Georgia.
—— SpectatorMorrison's writing is so deft that even barely sketched characters leap off the page
—— Sunday TelegraphHome is a powerful reminder of the impact the past plays on the present
—— The TimesMorrison can say more in one word than most novelists manage in an entire book. Superb
—— Glasgow Sunday HeraldBursting with poetic language and horrific events this is a penetrating insight to the African-American experience
—— The LadyIt is a powerful set-up, building suspense and a mounting sense of anxiety
—— GuardianToni Morrison’s mesmerising prose manages to be both elegiac and visceral at the same time
—— Mail on Sunday