Author:Robert K Massie
A gripping chronicle of the personal and political rivalries from the birth of Queen Victoria to the unification of Germany during the decades leading up to WW1 from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie
2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. How did it all begin?
With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionised the British Navy and brought forth the battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding and tensions, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most riveting.
‘History at its best, a fantastic mix of anecdote, observation and intelligent thinking’ Dan Snow, Daily Express
History at its best, a fantastic mix of anecdote, observation and intelligent thinking
—— Dan Snow , Daily ExpressMassie tells the story with controlled energy and attention to detail, especially human detail. It has not been told so well before.
—— Literary ReviewHe has the supreme gift of making history live in simple, readable language.
—— ObserverInheritor of Barbara Tuchman's mantle as the English-speaking world's pre-eminent popular historian...Robert K. Massie has now turned his attention to the arms race between Britain and Germany c.1890-1914, the most important precipitant towards the outbreak of the First World War.
—— Frank McLynnThis is a book you are bound to enjoy. The set pieces - the naval review of June 1897, the Jameson Raid, The Kaiser's visit to Windsor, Winston Churchill visiting the fleet, "the spring of the panther" - are dramatically recreated. The pen portraits of the political and naval establishments of Wilhelmine Germany and Victorian and Edwardian Britain are brilliantly evoked with a sharp eye for the memorable detail...Massie keeps his complex story under tight control...Monographers like myself can only envy the sheer sweep of Dreadnought and the author's rich palette of colours so deftly applied. Like Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August this is narrative history at its very best. Financial Times
—— Financial TimesThe pleasure of this book for me, in addition to such stimulating details, is that the Holy Roman Empire on the cusp of the 17th century is terra incognita, to be approached with a fresh eye... Rudoph's tolerance deserves a wider audience in our fractious age
—— Chris Frew , Scotland on SundayA very readable history... Marshall rightly argues, as an enabler of scientific, artistic and mystical insight, Rudolf has no peer
—— Gary Lachman , Independent on SundayIt was a magical moment in the history of Western civilization, when anything was possible. Mr Marshall brings it all wonderfully to life
—— Stuart Ferguson , Wall Street JournalAn entertaining description of life at the heart of a Europe stained by the clash of new and old ideas... an enjoyable description of what was an extraordinary epoch
—— Greg Neale , BBC History MagazineAn insightful and perceptive record of a city that revolutionised culture and science
—— PredictionFascinating
—— David V Barrett , Independent
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