Bøger af Trevor Wilson

In this monograph, five former secretaries of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) reflect on their experiences and the challenges of their times.

No conflict of the Great War excites stronger emotions than the war in Flanders in the autumn of 1917, and no name better encapsulates the horror and apparent futility of the Western Front than Passchendaele. By its end there had been 275,000 Allied and 200,000 German casualties. Yet the territorial gains made by the Allies in four desperate months were won back by Germany in only three days the following March. The devastation at Passchendaele, the authors argue, was neither inevitable nor inescapable; perhaps it was not necessary at all. Using a substantial archive of official and private records, much of which has never been previously consulted, Trevor Wilson and Robin Prior provide the fullest account of the campaign ever published.The book examines the political dimension at a level which has hitherto been absent from accounts of "e;Third Ypres."e; It establishes what did occur, the options for alternative action, and the fundamental responsibility for the carnage. Prior and Wilson consider the shifting ambitions and stratagems of the high command, examine the logistics of war, and assess what the available manpower, weaponry, technology, and intelligence could realistically have hoped to achieve. And, most powerfully of all, they explore the experience of the soldiers in the light-whether they knew it or not-of what would never be accomplished.

In the long history of the British Army, the Battle of the Somme was its bloodiest encounter. Between July 1 and mid-November 1916, 432,000 of its soldiers became casualties--about 3,600 for every day of battle. German casualties were far fewer despite British superiority in the air and in lethal artillery.What went wrong for the British, and who was responsible? Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson have examined the entire public archive on the Battle of the Somme to reconstruct the day-by-day course of the war. The result is the most precise and authentic account of the campaign on record and a book that challenges almost every received view of the battle. The colossal rate of infantry casualties in fact resulted from inadequate fire support; responsibility for tactical mistakes actually belonged to the High Command and the civilian War Committee. Field-Marshall Haig, the records show, was repeatedly deficient in strategy, tactics, command, and organization. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died for a cause that lacked both a coherent military plan and responsible political leadership. Prior and Wilson decisively change our understanding of the history of the Western Front.

'By far the best study of Britain and the First World War that has yet been written.' London Review of BooksThe Myriad Faces of War, first published in 1987, is a unique and compelling study of the First World War from the standpoint of British involvement. It explores the reasons for Britain's entry into the war, the nature and course of Britain's participation, and the far-reaching repercussions of the war on British society. The result is a rich and comprehensive chronicle of the social, political, diplomatic and military aspects of the 'Great War.''Professor Trevor Wilson's mighty work on the first world war... is a truly significant contribution to our understanding of what the war meant to the British people... a disciplined, unsentimental and thoughtful book - and it also retains strongly the human touch.' Spectator'Wilson ranges impressively over all major aspects of the conflict... a judicious, readable overview of a monster subject.' New York Times

By 1914 the Liberal Party had been governing Britain ever since its stunning general election victory of 1906. Four years later the Party was out of office, and so enfeebled it would never again form a government. What prompted the Liberal decline in the years of The Great War, and why did this decline then accelerate? Trevor Wilson's classic study analyses the strains exerted on Liberal principles by war, and the leadership crisis induced in 1916 by Lloyd George's ousting of Asquith.'A good political mystery, and Mr Wilson has told it in fine dramatic style.' A.J.P. Taylor'Offers portraits of those rivals, Asquith and Lloyd George, that are among the best - the most plausible and the most temperate - available.' New Yorker