Fatal Avenue: A Traveller's History of the Battlefields of Northern France and Flanders 1346-1945

(Paperback)

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Description

A unique work, combining military history and travel, studying the most fought-over area on earth. De Gaulle called it a 'fatal avenue' - that broad sweep of low-lying country stretching north-east of Paris. Over the centuries, invading armies have swept back and forth over this bloody terrain, and the names of battles fought here read like a dictionary of military history - from Agincourt, Calais and Crecy to Verdun, Vimy and Ypres. Fatal Avenue is both a history and a guide - a unique study of a region that has witnessed more bitter military conflict than any other area of its size on earth.

Reviews

Enthralling information on everything from archery to fortification, and from strategy to ecology... It could scarcely be bettered -- Ronald Blythe
Exceedingly well written... triumphantly succeeds... Richard Holmes is equally sure-footed when dealing with the human element, writing with equal conviction about Joan of Arc, Malborough, Napoleon, Haig, Foch, Ludendorff, Montgomery, Eisenhower, and many others. His book is an outstanding recruit to the shelves of military history -- Martin Fagge
A panoramic view of the military history of the battle-scarred landscape extending from Lorraine to Normandy * Sunday Times *
Utterly fascinating. Its combined activities as uplifting route-map of courage and gloire and as sobering geo-history of human folly makes this a shaking, appalling, irresistible read * Observer *

Author Bio

Richard Holmes is Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science. He was educated at Cambridge, Northern Illinois, and the University of Reading, and carried out his doctoral research on the French army of the Second Empire. For many years he taught military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. A celebrated military historian, Richard Holmes is the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed Tommy and Redcoat- The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. His dozen other books include Dusty Warriors, Sahib, The Western Front, The Little Field Marshal- Sir John French, The Road to Sedan, Riding the Retreat, The Second World War in Photographs and Firing Line (also published by Pimlico). He is general editor of The Oxford Companion to Military History and has presented eight BBC TV series, including 'War Walks', 'The Western Front' and 'Battlefields', and is famous for his hugely successful series 'Wellington- The Iron Duke' and 'Rebels and Redcoats'.