Hugh Cecil

Beasts in battle

‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting frame of mind in which young men of that time accepted the arguments for war in 1914.

  • Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and their Animals in the Great War

    Richard Van Emden

    Bloomsbury, pp. 336

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Few bluesmen have matched the success of John Mayall, ‘the godfather of British blues’, who died on Monday aged 90 at his home in California. In a career spanning more than six decades, he made 50-odd albums with an ever-changing incarnation of his band, the Bluesbreakers. His proselytisation of black American artists like Muddy Waters,

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