Military history can feel lacking in humanity, obsessed with “regiment numbers and calibre sizes”, said Katja Hoyer in The Spectator. But James Holland’s approach is different: in his acclaimed books about the Second World War, his focus has been on the “men behind the faceless facts”.
His latest, Brothers in Arms, follows a single British tank regiment – the Sherwood Rangers – as it makes its way from the Normandy beaches to Germany during the final year of the War. Drawing on a wide range of sources – diaries, letters, interviews with veterans – Holland paints a “vivid picture of what his subjects endured and achieved”. He takes us into the tanks with the men, breathing the same “hot, fume-filled air”, and smelling the same stench of “food, sweat and piss”.
“Going to war in a vehicle might seem an improvement on the trenches,” said Patrick Bishop in The Daily Telegraph. But Holland’s account shows that “those who served in armoured units had merely exchanged one form of hell for another”. Quite apart from the claustrophobia, there was the constant fear: death could arrive in many forms. A bomb might blow your tank to pieces; you might be “picked off by a sniper as you poked your head out of the hatch”; or a shell might ignite the tank’s fuel, incinerating those inside (a horror known as “brewing up”).
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What is remarkable is the intimacy he creates with his subjects: we start to feel we know these men personally, said Gerard DeGroot in The Times – men such as the war poet Keith Douglas, who was killed by an explosion in June 1944; or Denis Elmore, the last officer in the Sherwood Rangers to die, who perished less than three weeks before VE Day. This is war history as it should be written – “painful to read, but impossible to put down”.
Bantam 592pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99
The Week Bookshop
To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.
-
Has 21st-century culture become too bland?Under The Radar New book argues that the algorithm has killed creative originality
-
Affordability: Does Trump have an answer?Feature Trump ‘refuses to admit there is a problem’
-
How travel insurance through a credit card worksThe explainer Use a card with built-in coverage to book your next trip
-
Film reviews: ‘Jay Kelly’ and ‘Sentimental Value’Feature A movie star looks back on his flawed life and another difficult dad seeks to make amends
-
6 homes on the Gulf CoastFeature Featuring an elegant townhouse in New Orleans’ French Quarter and contemporary coastal retreat in Texas
-
The vast horizons of the Puna de AtacamaThe Week Recommends The ‘dramatic and surreal’ landscape features volcanoes, fumaroles and salt flats
-
The John Lewis ad: touching, or just weird?Talking Point This year’s festive offering is full of 1990s nostalgia – but are hedonistic raves really the spirit of Christmas?
-
Train Dreams pulses with ‘awards season gravitas’The Week Recommends Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton star in this meditative period piece about a working man in a vanished America
-
Middleland: Rory Stewart’s essay collection is a ‘triumph’The Week Recommends The Rest is Politics co-host compiles his fortnightly columns written during his time as an MP
-
‘Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America’ and ‘Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary’feature The culture divide in small-town Ohio and how the internet usurped dictionaries
-
6 homes with fall foliagefeature An autumnal orange Craftsman, a renovated Greek Revival church and an estate with an orchard
