BOOK OF THE YEAR - AS CHOSEN BY THE INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR.
'Like one of Field Marshal Haig's family whiskies, Max Hastings is a dram that steadily improves with age ... His position as Britain's leading military historian is now unassailable ... In this enormously impressive new book, Hastings effortlessly masters the complex lead-up to and opening weeks of the First World War ... [He] is as magisterial as we would expect ... This is a magnificent and deeply moving book, and with Max Hastings as our guide we are in the hands of a master' Nigel Jones, Telegraph
'Magnificent ... Hastings writes with an enviable grasp of pace and balance, as well as an acute eye for human detail. Even for readers who care nothing for the difference between a battalion and a division, his book is at once moving, provocative and utterly engrossing' Sunday Times
'Masterly ... Hastings is a brilliant guide to that strange, febrile twilight before Europe plunged into darkness. Writing in pungent prose suffused with irony and underpinned by a strong sense of moral outrage ... this is history-writing at its best, scholarly and fluent ... for anyone wanting to understand how that ghastly, much-misunderstood conflict came about, there could be no better place to start than this fine book' The Times
'One could scarcely ask for a better guide to these horrors than Max Hastings ... he is a superb writer with a rare gift for evoking the rhythm, mood and raw physical terror of battle ... If you are looking for a humane and compelling interpretive chronicle of the formative months of this horrific conflict, you will find none better' Mail on Sunday
'Very readable. Character, pace, sense of landscape, battlefield detail - all are superbly done ... it's a splendid read' Observer
