[PDF] Great Britains Great War eBook

Author : Jeremy Paxman
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 15,69 MB
Release : 2013-10-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0670919640

GET BOOK

Jeremy Paxman's magnificent history of the First World War tells the entire story of the war in one gripping narrative from the point of view of the British people. *** We may think we know about it, but what was life really like for the British people during the First World War? The well-known images - the pointing finger of Lord Kitchener; a Tommy buried in the mud of the Western Front; the memorial poppies of Remembrance Day - all reinforce the idea that it was a pointless waste of life. So why did the British fight it so willingly and how did the country endure it for so long? Using a wealth of first-hand source material, Jeremy Paxman brings vividly to life the day-to-day experience of the British over the entire course of the war, from politicians, newspapermen, campaigners and Generals, to Tommies, factory workers, nurses, wives and children. It shows how both British life and identity were utterly transformed - not always for the worst - by the enormous upheaval of the war. Rich with personalities, surprises and ironies, this lively narrative history paints a picture of courage and confusion, doubts and dilemmas, and is written with Jeremy Paxman's characteristic flair for storytelling, wry humour and pithy observation. *** "A fine introduction to the part Britain played in the first of the worst two wars in history. The writing is lively and the detail often surprising and memorable" Guardian "He writes so well and sympathetically, and chooses his detail so deftly, that if there is one new history of the war that you might actually enjoy from the very large centennial selection this is very likely it" The Times

Author : Simon Heffer
Publisher : Century
Page : 928 pages
File Size : 47,15 MB
Release : 2019-09-19
Category :
ISBN : 9781847948311

GET BOOK

_______________________________ 'A brilliant history: The first serious and really wide-ranging history of the Home Front during the Great War for decades. Scholarly, objective and extremely well-written. Filled with surprising revelations and empathy. Heffer's eye for the telling detail is evident on almost every page. A remarkable intellectual and literary achievement.' - ANDREW ROBERTS, TELEGRAPH _______________________________ A major new work of history on the profound changes in British society during the First World War The Great War evokes images of barbed wire and mud-filled trenches, and of the carnage of the Somme and Passchendaele, but it also involved change on the home front on an almost revolutionary scale. In his hugely ambitious and deeply researched new book, Simon Heffer explores how Britain was drawn into this slaughter, and was then transformed to fight a war in which, at times, its very future seemed in question. After a vivid account of the fraught conversations between Whitehall and Britain's embassies across Europe as disaster loomed in July 1914, Heffer explains why a government so desperate to avoid conflict found itself championing it. He describes the high politics and low skulduggery that saw the principled but passive Asquith replaced as prime minister by the unscrupulous but energetic Lloyd George; and he unpicks the arguments between politicians and generals about how to prosecute the war, which raged until the final offensive. He looks at the impact of four years of struggle on everyday life as people sought to cope with dwindling stocks of food and essential supplies, with conscription into the Army or wartime industries, with air-raids and with the ever-present threat of bereavement; and, in Ireland, with the political upheaval that followed the Easter Rising. And he shows how, in the spring of 1918, political obstinacy and incompetence saw all this sacrifice almost thrown away. Throughout, he complements his analysis with vivid portraits of the men and women who shaped British life during the war - soldiers such as Lord Kitchener, politicians such as Churchill, pacifists such as Lady Ottoline Morrell, and overmighty subjects such as the press magnate Lord Northcliffe. The result is a richly nuanced picture of an era that endured suffering and loss on an appalling scale but that also advanced the emancipation of women, notions of better health care and education, and pointed the way to a less deferential, more egalitarian future. _____________________________ 'Staring at God is a vast compendium of atrocious political conduct. Refreshing. A trenchant history.' - GERARD DE GROOT, THE TIMES 'A magisterial history' - MELANIE MCDONAGH, DAILY MAIL 'Gloriously rich and spirited [...] it zips along, leavened by so many wonderful cultural and social details.' - DOMINIC SOUTHBROOK, SUNDAY TIMES 'Ambitious in its scope, content and approach. Masterly.' - CHARLES VYVYAN, STANDPOINT 'Fascinating stuff.' - SPECTATOR 'Possibly the finest, most comprehensive analysis of the home front in the Great War ever produced.' - LITERARY REVIEW 'Every bit as good as its two predecessors. Illuminating.' - EXPRESS 'Absorbing' - NEW STATESMAN

Author : Jay Winter
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 37,77 MB
Release : 2020-12-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1108843166

GET BOOK

Previous edition of this translation: 2005.

Author : Michael J.K. Walsh
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 46,38 MB
Release : 2016-11-25
Category : History
ISBN : 1317029836

GET BOOK

In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies went to war in 1914 against the Central Powers, history's first global conflict was inevitable. It is the social and cultural reactions to that war and within those distant, often overlooked, societies which is the focus of this volume. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Iraq and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes are addressed, offering new perspectives on imperial and colonial history and theory, as well as art, music, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender, class, race and diplomacy at the end of the pax Britannica.

Author : Adrian Gregory
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 24,63 MB
Release : 2008-10-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0521450373

GET BOOK

A groundbreaking new history of the British home front during the First World War.

Author : C.R.M.F. Cruttwell
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Page : 688 pages
File Size : 36,89 MB
Release : 2019-09-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0897336607

GET BOOK

This vivid, detailed history of World War I presents the general reader with an accurate and readable account of the campaigns and battles, along with brilliant portraits of the leaders and generals of all countries involved. Scrupulously fair, praising and blaming friend and enemy as circumstances demand, this has become established as the classic account of the first world-wide war.

Author : Zara S. Steiner
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 15,90 MB
Release : 2017-04-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0230213014

GET BOOK

How and why did Britain become involved in the First World War? Taking into account the scholarship of the last twenty-five years, this second edition of Zara S. Steiner's classic study, thoroughly revised with Keith Neilson, explores a subject which is as highly contentious as ever. While retaining the basic argument that Britain went to war in 1914 not as a result of internal pressures but as a response to external events, Steiner and Neilson reject recent arguments that Britain became involved because of fears of an 'invented' German menace, or to defend her Empire. Instead, placing greater emphasis than before on the role of Russia, the authors convincingly argue that Britain entered the war in order to preserve the European balance of power and the nation's favourable position within it. Lucid and comprehensive, Britain and the Origins of the First World War brings together the bureaucratic, diplomatic, economic, strategical and ideological factors that led to Britain's entry into the Great War, and remains the most complete survey of the pre-war situation.

Author : J. Winter
Publisher : Springer
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 15,8 MB
Release : 2003-07-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0230506240

GET BOOK

This second edition of the classic bestseller by J.M. Winter, originally published by Macmillan in 1985, includes a new and up-to-date introduction. This was the first major study to highlight the paradox that a conflict that killed or maimed over two million men, also created conditions which improved the health of the civilian population. Examining both the war and its aftermath, Dr Winter surveys not only trends in population and the impact of the conflict on an entire generation, but also, more profoundly, the meaning of the literature of the period.

Author : Robert K. Massie
Publisher : Random House
Page : 1064 pages
File Size : 31,5 MB
Release : 2003-10-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1588363201

GET BOOK

In a work of extraordinary narrative power, filled with brilliant personalities and vivid scenes of dramatic action, Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Dreadnought, elevates to its proper historical importance the role of sea power in the winning of the Great War. The predominant image of this first world war is of mud and trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, and slaughter. A generation of European manhood was massacred, and a wound was inflicted on European civilization that required the remainder of the twentieth century to heal. But with all its sacrifice, trench warfare did not win the war for one side or lose it for the other. Over the course of four years, the lines on the Western Front moved scarcely at all; attempts to break through led only to the lengthening of the already unbearably long casualty lists. For the true story of military upheaval, we must look to the sea. On the eve of the war in August 1914, Great Britain and Germany possessed the two greatest navies the world had ever seen. When war came, these two fleets of dreadnoughts—gigantic floating castles of steel able to hurl massive shells at an enemy miles away—were ready to test their terrible power against each other. Their struggles took place in the North Sea and the Pacific, at the Falkland Islands and the Dardanelles. They reached their climax when Germany, suffocated by an implacable naval blockade, decided to strike against the British ring of steel. The result was Jutland, a titanic clash of fifty-eight dreadnoughts, each the home of a thousand men. When the German High Seas Fleet retreated, the kaiser unleashed unrestricted U-boat warfare, which, in its indiscriminate violence, brought a reluctant America into the war. In this way, the German effort to “seize the trident” by defeating the British navy led to the fall of the German empire. Ultimately, the distinguishing feature of Castles of Steel is the author himself. The knowledge, understanding, and literary power Massie brings to this story are unparalleled. His portrayals of Winston Churchill, the British admirals Fisher, Jellicoe, and Beatty, and the Germans Scheer, Hipper, and Tirpitz are stunning in their veracity and artistry. Castles of Steel is about war at sea, leadership and command, courage, genius, and folly. All these elements are given magnificent scope by Robert K. Massie’ s special and widely hailed literary mastery. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great.

Author : Robert K. Massie
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Page : 1076 pages
File Size : 28,7 MB
Release : 2012-06-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0307819930

GET BOOK

A gripping chronicle of the personal and national rivalries that led to the twentieth century’s first great arms race, from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie With the biographer’s rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittery figures: the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; 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 revolutionized the British navy and brought forth the first true battleship, the H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstandings, 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. Praise for Dreadnought “Dreadnought is history in the grand manner, as most people prefer it: how people shaped, or were shaped by, events.”—Time “A classic [that] covers superbly a whole era . . . engrossing in its glittering gallery of characters.”—Chicago Sun-Times “[Told] on a grand scale . . . Massie [is] a master of historical portraiture and anecdotage.”—The Wall Street Journal “Brilliant on everything he writes about ships and the sea. It is Massie’s eye for detail that makes his nautical set pieces so marvelously evocative.”—Los Angeles Times