• 'All the King's Men' by Saul David

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      Captain_Crusty
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      'All the King's Men', the latest book by Saul David, is the story of the British Army from the restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Saul David has a good pedigree in military history - he is a professor of war studies, has published several award winning military non-fiction books, a couple of best selling military fiction books and has presented military programmes on both the radio and television. With this eclectic background, hopes were high for a well written and fast moving account of the British Army in its formative years. I am glad to say it met all expectations.

      The book considered the likes of Marlborough, Wolfe and Wellington and their campaigns around the world. Having read more detailed accounts of these individual campaigns, I thought this book contained enough detail to provide a good understanding balanced with enough pace to allow the book to cover over 150 years in its 500 pages. Where it really came into its own was that this allowed the reader to compare these different phases of the British Army's development.

      It must be said that this is generally a work of non-fiction story-telling rather than hard-hitting academic critique; this is not a criticism on what is an excellent book, merely an observation which may encourage the occasional reader who finds heavy weight military histories rather daunting.

      Lack of decent maps and diagrams is one of my biggest bug bears when reading military histories. Saul David has littered the book with a good spread, covering most of the major actions discussed, so no problems there! It also comes with a good bibliography and is well-referenced throughout.

      The book is published on 2nd February by Penguin - by 'chance', this is also the date of the first of a series of three programmes on BBC4 by Saul David called "Bullets, Boots and Bandages". A history of military logistics (no - really...) - I will be watching it on the back of reading this book. The book is available on Amazon in hardback for £16.50 (for delivery on 30 Jan apparently) and on Kindle for £14.99.

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      Captain Crusty



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      1. Categories:
      2. Non-Fiction,
      3. History,
      4. Military
      Comments 2 Comments
      1. Oyibo's Avatar
        Oyibo - 28-01-2012, 11:51
        For some reason I get this message when I access the link:

        Oyibo, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:
        1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
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      1. Andy_S's Avatar
        Andy_S - 29-01-2012, 15:55
        Saul David rides pacey, popular history (his book on the Indian Mutiny is a corker), so I suspect this will be a good book.

        In my limited dealings with the man, he seems like a very down-to-earth guy, which is not always the case with popular literary and media types.

        Thanks for the review, I'll be ordering a copy.