Author:Mary Seacole,Sara Salih
Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, Seacole set out independently to the Crimea where she acted as doctor and 'mother' to wounded soldiers while running her business, the 'British Hotel'. A witness to key battles, she gives vivid accounts of how she coped with disease, bombardment and other hardships at the Crimean battlefront.
"In her introduction to the very welcome Penguin edition, Sara Salih expertly analyses the rhetorical complexities of Seacole's book to explore the richness of her story. Traveller, entrepreneur, healer and woman of colour, Mary Seacole is a singular and fascinating figure, overstepping all conventional boundaries." Jan Marsh, Independent
"It's hard to believe that this amazing adventure story is the true-life experience of a Jamaican woman - it would make a great film." Andrea Levy, Sunday Times
Shephard's engaging and impressively researched study offers a detailed survey of psychiatric - and to a lesser extent, social and cultural - responses to war trauma from the First World War to the Gulf War of 1991... Thorough, thought-provoking and enormously informative
—— Paul Lerner , Times Literary SupplementThis detailed study of psychiatric casualties in war will surely become the standard work of reference on this complex, difficult subject...enthralling
—— Anthony Storr , The TimesOutstanding... Shepard tells this story with the skill of a thriller-writer as well as the assiduous pride of a historian... A bold, harrowing, provocative, fiercely intelligent work
—— Charles Fernyhough , Scotland on SundayAn utterly absorbing study of the century-long relationship between psychiatry and the military... The richness of his story derives from the sheer variety of experiences and personalities that it incorporates
—— Richard Overy , Literary ReviewLively, discursive, constantly absorbing...succeeds for the most part in maintaining an admirably dispassionate position between the dismissive strictures of the hardened critic of modern psychiatry on the one hand and the exuberant messianic certainties of the zealots of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and drugs on the other
—— Anthony Clare , Sunday TimesHe examines every branch of warfare in its history, psychology, metallurgy, genetics, logistics, archaeology, tactics and strategy...He is as much at home in the Empire of Babylon as he is on the Somme...On every subject he has something fresh to say. His learning is staggering and his gift for exposition unequalled.
—— Nigel Nicolson , Daily TelegraphKeegan's power as a writer derives from the fact that he does not see himself merely as a chronicler of battles, but as a student of the human condition. It is the breadth of his grasp of civilisation, as well as of the soldier's art, that makes this book so formidable.
—— Max Hastings , Evening Standard