The Fateful Year

Oct 30, 2024 5:19 AM

Author:Mark Bostridge

The Fateful Year

The Fateful Year by Mark Bostridge is the story of England in 1914. War with Germany, so often imagined and predicted, finally broke out when people were least prepared for it.

Here, among a crowded cast of unforgettable characters, are suffragettes, armed with axes, destroying works of art, schoolchildren going on strike in support of their teachers, and celebrity aviators thrilling spectators by looping the loop. A theatrical diva prepares to shock her audience, while an English poet in the making sets out on a midsummer railway journey that will result in the creation of a poem that remains loved and widely known to this day.

With the coming of war, England is beset by rumour and foreboding. There is hysteria about German spies, fears of invasion, while patriotic women hand out white feathers to men who have failed to rush to their country's defence. In the book's final pages, a bomb falls from the air onto British soil for the first time, and people live in expectation of air raids.

As 1914 fades out, England is preparing itself for the prospect of a war of long duration.

Mark Bostridge won the Gladstone Memorial Prize at Oxford University. His first book Vera Brittain: A Life was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize, the NCR NonFiction Award, and the Fawcett Prize. His books also include the bestselling Letters from a Lost Generation; Lives for Sale, a collection of biographers' tales; Because You Died, a selection of Vera Brittain's First World War poetry and prose; and Florence Nightingale: The Woman and her Legend, which was named as a Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2008 and awarded the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. The Fateful Year was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2015.

Reviews

An absorbing kaleidoscope of events and episodes . . . Hints, forewarnings, inadvertent prophecies of what was to come spike the air like pollen. There's no doubting this book's eye for a good story, or the skill in telling it

—— Guardian

Brisk and enjoyable, full of unexpected fascinations

—— Sunday Times

A truly gripping chronicle of the mood of a nation moving unwittingly towards catastrophe. Bostridge moves deftly between public event and vivid personal experience with sympathy and imagination

—— Financial Times

Spy hysteria, petty disputes, shocking art . . . an ingeniously constructed picture of England in 1914

—— The Times 'Book of the Week'

A masterly snapshot of the moment before the world went mad

—— Evening Standard

A wonderfully atmospheric narrative for those who are interested in the period but want more than just trenches and treaties

—— Observer, Book of the Week

A moving and myth-confronting account of 1914, Bostridge invigorates the familiar story of a year of two halves, when seven months of peace gave way to the worst period of conflict in world history. The humanity of this book intensifies the poignancy of hindsight and heightens one's awareness of the anguish felt by those survivors who remained behind

—— Juliet Nicolson , Telegraph, Book of the Week

An excellent introduction to this year's centenary of the War To End All Wars and a highly readable account for history buffs

—— Daily Express

As Bostridge shows in this beautifully written and detailed book, 1914 was a 'fateful year', England was truly never the same again

—— Independent, Book of the Week

Vivid, finely drawn

—— Mail on Sunday

As mesmerising as a great historical novel

—— BBC History Magazine

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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