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Military Dispatches
Military Dispatches
Oct 30, 2024 7:28 AM

Author:The Duke of Wellington

Military Dispatches

The vivid and exciting accounts written from the front line, taking the story of the British war with Napoleon from its desperate beginnings in Portugal to the final triumph at Waterloo

The Duke of Wellington was not only an incomparable battle commander but a remarkably expressive, fluent and powerful writer. His dispatches have long been viewed as classics of military literature and have been pillaged by all writers on the Peninsular War and the final campaigns in France and Belgium ever since they were published. This new selection allows the reader to follow the extraordinary epic in Wellington's own words - from the tentative beginnings in 1808, clinging to a small area of Portugal in the face of overwhelming French power across the whole of the rest of Europe, to the campaigns that over six years devastated opponent after opponent. The book ends with Wellington's invasion of France and the coda of 'the 100 days' that ended with Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo.

Reviews

‘The man who stumbled on HELL: His place in history has never been revealed. His memoir recounts how he uncovered the horrors of Belsen’

—— Daily Mail

It is all here – and all told with the same verve, eye for anecdote and command of the material. This is a very good book, and a model of how narrative history should be written... anybody remotely interested in the battle should read

—— The Spectator

Invigorating and compelling

—— Daily Telegraph

I was gripped by the wealth of detail and humanity in the book... This is how the tales of battles should be told, whatever the time, place or outcome

—— Emily Mayhew, author of Wounded

A grim story – but well worth the telling

—— Saul David , Evening Standard

What is truly gripping is the human horror, and the realization that what counts in war is not glory or patriotism, but victory, supremacy and the uncompromising need to prevail

—— Roger Lewis , Daily Mail

Original and fascinating… If you buy one book to mark [the] anniversary [of Waterloo], buy this one

—— Washington Post

O’Keeffe describes these fraught, uncertain days with skill and a touch for ground-level detail... [He] has told in vivid colors a story that is often passed over in most narratives, but that is alive with drama and human tragedy

—— New York Times

O’Keeffe has done a magnificent job tying up loose ends and telling a story that needed to be told

—— Good Book Guide

O’Keeffe brings an unjaundiced eye to what has been a well-told tale

—— Connexion

Heart-breaking and breath-taking, and a vivid tribute both to all those who escaped from France into Spain as well as those who helped them. A thoroughly moving and very readable book.

—— Simon Mawer, author of The Girl Who Fell From The Sky

Escaping the Nazis across the Pyrenean mountain trails became one of the most extraordinary acts of spontaneous resistance of World War Two. In Cruel Crossing, Ed Stourton straps on his backpack and takes to the escape lines himself, reflecting as he treks on the courage and self-sacrifice of the escapers and evaders who went before him - many of them young women, whose remarkable stories are told here often for the first time. Stourton has produced both a compelling history and a unique mountain guide, telling his story with his familiar humour and journalistic verve.

—— Sarah Helm, author of A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE

An important book packed with poignant stories, remarkable characters and uncomfortable truths.

—— Clare Mulley, author of The Spy Who Loved and The Woman Who Saved The Children

Cruel Crossing is an accomplished account of an overlooked part of the Second World War. Using wide-ranging research and an impressive number of eye-witness accounts, Stourton tells the story of the escape lines across the Pyrenees, and of the wartime history of southwest France in all its muddied complexity. The gripping escape stories he narrates are sometimes harrowing, often moving, and above all, full of variety and surprises. There is suffering, extraordinary bravery, friendship and even humour; but there is also treachery, betrayal and villainy. A fitting memorial to how war brings out the best and worst in people.

—— Matthew Parker, author of The Battle of Britain

Enthralling stories ... a moving retelling of some of the war's most heroic episodes

—— Nigel Jones , Telegraph

A vigorous book, full of energy as well as insight

—— Jeremy Black
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