{"title":"Books by Robert Cowley","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781472874320","title":"The Killing Season","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn in-depth, authoritative account of the autumn of 1914 on the Western Front and the First Battle of Ypres, a true turning point in modern warfare.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe final months of 1914 were the bloodiest interval in a famously bloody war, a killing season. They ended with the First Battle of Ypres, a struggle in West Flanders, Belgium, the importance of which has been too long over-looked – until now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Cowley’s account of this crucial period describes how German armies in France were poised to sweep north to capture the Channel ports and knock England out of the war – and were only held back by a brilliant improvisation from a cobbled-together handful of desperate British, French and Belgium troops.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a re-examination of events that have too long seemed set in stone, Cowley combines a wide array of source materials with sharp portrayals both of military leaders and the men they lead. We follow Albert of Belgium, the world’s last warrior king; French General Ferdinand Foch, a former professor of military science; and Hendrik Geeraert, an alcoholic barge keeper, who pulled off Albert’s literal last-ditch effort. Many other memorable characters emerge, including Sir John French along with both a young Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe vast brawl of four armies in Flanders was a turning point that irrevocably changed the nature of modern warfare. In this visceral account, based on 30 years of research and picking up where Barbara Tuchman’s \u003ci\u003eThe Guns of August\u003c\/i\u003e left off, Cowley details the crucial decisions that determined the outcome of the Great War – which may have been decided by a single, extraordinary afternoon.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55896429134197,"sku":"9781472874320","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472874320_909e5e6b-9fd6-4498-b7ab-49a6a9bea072.jpg?v=1786020511"},{"product_id":"9780300212488","title":"Poilu – The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914–1918","description":"The harrowing first-person account of a French foot soldier who survived four years in the trenches of the First World War Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne. Barthas’ riveting wartime narrative, first published in France in 1978, presents the vivid, immediate experiences of a frontline soldier.      This excellent new translation brings Barthas’ wartime writings to English-language readers for the first time. His notebooks and letters represent the quintessential memoir of a “poilu,” or “hairy one,” as the untidy, unshaven French infantryman of the fighting trenches was familiarly known. Upon Barthas’ return home in 1919, he painstakingly transcribed his day-to-day writings into nineteen notebooks, preserving not only his own story but also the larger story of the unnumbered soldiers who never returned. Recounting bloody battles and endless exhaustion, the deaths of comrades, the infuriating incompetence and tyranny of his own officers, Barthas also describes spontaneous acts of camaraderie between French poilus and their German foes in trenches just a few paces apart. An eloquent witness and keen observer, Barthas takes his readers directly into the heart of the Great War.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232494170485,"sku":"9780300212488","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300212488_822f2f14-f6e2-4288-b3d5-8174deebfd76.jpg?v=1786012792"},{"product_id":"9780330487245","title":"What If?","description":"Anyone interested in military history or indeed history in general will find it fascinating to read.' Spectator. What If? is a collection of counterfactual essays dealing with military events. Concentrating on some of the most intriguing military history turning points of the last 3,000 years, twenty celebrated historians, including Alistair Horne and John Keegan, have come together to produce a group of essays that enhance our current understanding of decisive events. 'Pure, almost illicit pleasure. What makes these essays tremendously diverting is how little they strain one's sense of credibility.' Andrew Roberts, Sunday Telegraph. 'These informed, elegant essays authoritively analyse incidents over the past 3,000 years.' The Times. 'One of the delights of the book is that broad speculative analysis is built from a mass of exciting detail. This make for a top-class bed-side read.' Financial Times","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56285989175669,"sku":"9780330487245","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780330487245_cba97939-a82e-46e6-8a9d-6d601f5f5d8d.jpg?v=1786013576"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-robert-cowley.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}