Nigel Jones

Win some — lose too many

Rather than battering away on the Western Front, we should have kicked in the back door through Italy or Salonica, according to Mallinson’s Too Important for the Generals

issue 11 June 2016

  • Too Important for the Generals: Losing and Winning the First World War

    Allan Mallinson

    Bantam, pp. 369

In this centenary year of the Somme, it is refreshing to read a book about the Great War that is not yet another dreary recital of the tragic and over-familiar facts, but successfully gets to grips with the dilemmas facing the commanders and politicians mediating the gargantuan conflict.

Historical debate about the war now boils down to two views.

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