Counter-Currents
Kathryn S.’s Recommended Military History Reading List
Kathryn S.
Horace Vernet, Napoleon at Jena: “En Avant!”
1,990 words
1. Homer, Iliad. W. C. Bryant, trans. Perth, Aus.: Imperium Press, 2019, 576 pp.: While everyone knows the story, few people today have actually read it. You can bet that almost every great military commander in Western history read it. Composed during the Greek “Dark Ages” and (probably) based on a real event, Iliad is an echo of the even earlier Bronze Age — of war’s power at its all-encompassing, glorious, and terrible pinnacle. There are many English translations out there (I would stay away from the prose versions, unless you cannot stand poetry). Alexander Pope’s rhyming classic is the beautiful text schoolchildren learned in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but there are more dynamic versions, like the blank verse of Robert Fagles; and more faithful versions, like Richmond Lattimore’s line-by-line translation. Imperium Press has also released a version that is a pleasure to read. Its opening Chorus chants to us: “O Goddess! sing the wrath of Peleus’ son, Achilles; sing the deadly wrath that brought woes numberless upon the Greeks . . .”
2. Thucydides, Landmark Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War. New York: Free Press, 1996, 748 pp.: This is the original military history from which all others have taken their cues. Thucydides was an Athenian commander during this fifth-century BC conflict — until he lost a battle and suffered banishment for it. Instead of sulking, he used his new free time to travel the Mediterranean and coolly document the long war that ended the Greek golden age. On the way, he came to the unsettling truth that a race’s greatness and ambition might also be its doom. Famous passages include Pericles’ Funeral Oration, an account of the Great Athenian Plague that killed 100,000 people, the Melian Dialogue, and the disastrous Sicilian Expedition. Some wars strengthen and unite peoples, while others cripple them for good. Thucydides chronicled the latter kind. The Landmark edition is the best for its extensive cross-referencing, maps, and annotations. The opening lines (yes, in third person) begin: “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.”
3. Veronica Fiorato, Anthea Boylston, & Christopher Knüsel, eds., Blood Red Roses: The Archaeology of a Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2000, 294 pp.: Legacy Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin almost certainly have ancestors/relations who fought at the 1461 Battle of Towton — the bloodiest afternoon spent on English soil. There are lots of books about the Wars of the Roses, but this one is unique. A team of authors — archaeologists, anthropologists, and forensics experts — have together analyzed a mass grave located near the historical site of Towton. What they have found there is as fascinating as it is disturbing. They present readers with proof of the extreme brutality of medieval warfare. It is impossible not to marvel at the sheer nerve of the men who fought in such battles. The first words in this book are these: “There is at present a malign fashion to forget the past of our nation, or to study it only to regret it and apologise for it, to ourselves and other nations. This is ignorant stupidity.” Not for the faint of heart or queasy of stomach.
4. Rob Harper, Fighting the French Revolution: The Great Vendée Rising of 1793. Yorkshire, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2019, 400 pp.: Historians and political philosophers have justly viewed the French Revolution as an event of cardinal significance. For those who have assumed that the French peasantry welcomed the Republic and its “egalitarian” reforms, this book on the Vendée provides corrective nuance. Its subject is a tough grassroots resistance movement that almost succeeded in its defiance of a nearly genocidal regime. As the Paris Terror peaked, and as the Republican government sought to enforce mass conscription in the countryside, thousands of aristocrats and peasants south of the Loire River Valley joined forces to create for God and Country an anti-Revolutionary army. When a group of Vendean militants asked the 20-year-old Comte Henri La Rochejaquelein to lead them, the nobleman replied, “I will show myself worthy. If I advance, follow me; if I flinch, cut me down; if I fall, avenge me.” A little-known struggle outside of France, the Rising was full of heroes and appalling crimes. At least 250,000 Vendean soldiers and civilians died at the hands of a pitiless establishment. An opening sentence of the book reads thusly: “The Paris Commune dominated the brutal politics of 1793, [but] . . . while life and death political struggles were underway in [the capital], the west of France . . . rose up en masse against the same revolution that had supposedly brought liberté, égalité and fraternité to the people.”
5. John Elting, Swords around a Throne: Napoleon’s Grande Armée. New York: De Capo Press, 1997, 769 pp.: If there was a silver lining to the French Revolution, it was the rise of “enlightened despot,” Napoleon Bonaparte. Love him or hate him, we must concede that Napoleon was one of the most interesting individuals to have lived in the last 500 years — at least. No military history list would be complete without including a book about this extraordinary man: a youth from an island backwater, to star artillery officer, to war hero, to general, to First Consul, to continental conqueror, to European Emperor, to exile, to returned savior — and finally, to a prisoner whose life’s end mirrored its beginning: one of thwarted ambition on yet another island backwater. There are many excellent books about Napoleon and the era he dominated. Elting’s book stands out for its focus on the Grande Armée, the force that Napoleon considered to be an extension of himself. Well-written and peppered throughout with Herbert Knötel’s uniform illustrations, Swords tells the story of how the Emperor transformed the French military from an ineffective laughingstock into the most feared army in the world — and then, how he ultimately destroyed it. The first sentence in this study is a quotation: “ ‘The Grande Armée fought hard, seldom cheered, and always bitched.’ ”
NB: Here is a clip from the 1970 film Waterloo that interprets Napoleon’s last battle and the tragic destruction of his Guard.
6. Don Troiani & Brian C. Pohanka, Don Troiani’s Civil War. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1995, 191 pp.: The noble genre of war painting has become a lost art, but there is one contemporary artist who holds his own against the eighteenth and nineteenth-century masters of the majestic battlescape. Over the course of his career, Don Troiani has painted scenes from the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. His heart, however, belongs to the Civil War. The collection of paintings in this book shows Troiani’s ability to create epic scenes — off the page, the reader can almost hear the Rebel Yells, almost feel the burning of his eyes as gritty tears stream down chapped and powder-blackened cheeks — as well as his knack for more intimate character studies. He has researched the minutest details of every uniform he has illustrated, and the text supplementing his work is free of moralizing (there is only one black “soldier” pictured in the volume; it seems that the colored troops have failed to inspire him). This is a celebration of battlefield valor during the four most glorious and tragic years of American history. Some of the highlights include: Last Rounds, The Gray Wall, Lone Star, The High Watermark, Lions at the Round Top, Lee’s Texans, and The Last Salute. This part-history/part-art book begins with the dedication: “To the American soldiers, North and South, whose legacy is an inspiration and whose courage shall not go unrecorded . . .”
7. John Keegan, The Face of Battle. New York: Viking Press, 1983, 384 pp.: Keegan’s book does several things well. He discusses the importance and historiographical weaknesses of traditional military history. He differentiates between “battle” and “combat,” the former being a special type of warfare that combines pageantry and ritual into a theater of death. He then applies his methodology – of bringing battle to life by exploring the sensations and feelings of the soldiers who participated in them – to three case studies: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. What was it really like to muster together in the killing fields with one’s brother-comrades? What were the physical and psychological effects that the experiences of battle had on a soldier? How did he endure the thick “arrow-clouds” at Agincourt, the fiery comets of canister at Waterloo, and the “steel rain” of the Somme? Since its publication in 1976, military historians have almost unanimously adopted Battle’s approach. Among Keegan’s first statements is: “the sensations and emotions with which the participants [grappled], though relating to a situation which [may lie] in [the] distant” past, they remain “real enough” today, for these reactions have always been “a very powerful, if dormant, part of every human being’s make-up . . . [Such] feelings, after all, are the product of some of man’s deepest fears: fear of wounds, fear of death, fear of putting into danger the lives of those for whose well-being one is responsible.”
Honorable mentions go to Edward Daly’s Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War; Clark Savage’s King of All Things; Henry Lachouque’s The Anatomy of Glory: Napoleon and His Guard; and Modris Eksteins’ Rites of Spring.
I mean this list to be an ongoing process to which I will add and/or update in the future. Doubtless there are gaps, including the dearth of Eastern European studies, as well as a lack of twentieth-century conflicts (I admit that I find the latter mostly uninteresting). I will leave readers with one of my favorite war stories from an 1861 field near Manassas Junction, Virginia:
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Colonel Francis Bartow and his Georgia infantry had waited impatiently for a pitched battle all spring and summer long. Finally, at First Manassas, they got their wish.
In the thick of the fighting, Bartow received an urgent request for aid from the exposed Confederate right flank that now directly faced swarms of Union soldiers. Stubborn Federals had occupied “the house, fences, and outbuildings of the Edgar Matthews farm.” Although the colonel’s men were green, they were fierce, and Bartow obeyed the summons. The next quarter of an hour proved to be some of the “most difficult fighting the 8th Georgia endured during the war.” Round shot bounced a bloody swathe through its ranks. As Union troops hemmed them in from the front, right, and rear, a lieutenant went down with a leg wound, and Bartow’s horse was shot out from under him. The beleaguered Georgians fell back to Henry Hill.
Bartow realized that further “action was required, and upon seeing General [Gustave T.] Beauregard riding toward him, he asked, ‘What shall be done? Tell me, and if human effort can avail, I will do it!’” To this, Beauregard pointed toward a position occupied by murderous Northern artillery. “That battery should be silenced,” he said. With that, Bartow seized the regimental colors and led his men into the melée.
As he reached a fence line that separated the combatants, a bullet shattered his foot and knocked him to the ground. Staggering, he waved his sword and encouraged his men onward” — only to be hit once more, this time in the chest.[1] At that point, something extraordinary happened. In a scene both momentary and timeless, Bartow became an example of Western man ennobled by battle; of a warrior becoming strongest at his weakest.
Knowing his wound was fatal, the Colonel spent what breath he had left by shouting to his men a final, hoarse encouragement: “They have killed me, but never give up the field!” His men charged past the posts, captured the battery, and thus fulfilled the promise of their commander. I hope he heard the cheers of his Georgians over the “silence” of enemy guns before he heard nothing but the profound silence of eternity. Virtute et Valore.
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Note
[1] Quotations from Don Troiani, Earl J. Coates, & Michael J. McAfee, Don Troiani’s Civil War Soldiers (Lanham, Md.: Stackpole Books, 2017), 65-6.
29 comments
The 1970 film Waterloo you reference is indeed splendid. Funnily enough, my favourite scene is The Duchess of Richmond’s Ball – the image of an ordered, hierarchical, polished society. A highlight is when a suitably arrogant Christopher Plummer makes his entrance as the Duke of Wellington, as the band breaks into Handel’s “See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes!”.
“Scum — nothing but beggars and scoundrels.” I guess they came through for His Grace when it counted.
I appreciate the film, too, and it’s pretty balanced. I disliked Rod Steiger’s portrayal of Napoleon at first — seemed very “stagey” — but it’s grown on me.
Lovely piece.
Thank you, Hamburger.
Wonderful article, as usual – thank you, Kathryn S.
I have three recommendations for the list.
The Encyclopedia of Military History, by the father & son team of Ernest & Trevor Dupuy. (There are several military history “encyclopedias” out there; this is the best, IMO.) At over a thousand pages, with maps, diagrams, drawings, it covers the entirety of military history from 3500 B.C. to the present, all continents, civilizations, wars, campaigns & major battles. It also has intelligent commentary on leading generals, admirals, weapons & tactical developments over the centuries.
The West Point Atlas of American Wars, two volumes. edited by Brig. Gen. Vincent Esposito. A large “folio” type book with a unique approach: in contrast to the usual format of text supplemented by occasional maps, the West Point Atlas consists of one map page facing one text page throughout. Each map page (including multiple pages for many battles, hour by hour, showing changing positions of the opposing armies & their sub-units) is explained or narrated by the facing text page. This gives the reader a much clearer mental picture of what was physically happening on the battlefield, almost minute by minute in some cases. Don’t be fooled by the title. The 2nd volume includes ALL the campaigns of WWI & II, not just ones with American participation. It was one of the first English language histories to pay close attention to the eastern front in both wars. One weakness: its historiography is Cold War era, before the Russian archives were opened (for a while) after 1989, meaning its eastern front coverage relies almost exclusively on German sources.
The West Point Atlas of Napoleonic Wars – same map narrated by text format as #2, leading (IMO) to a deeper, broader understanding of battles & campaigns.
Thank you, Mr. Sprayberry!
Vincent Esposito is a fabulous military resource, especially when it comes to maps and atlases. I have been toying with the idea of buying his Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars that is criminally out-of-print and now quite pricey. Maybe it will make the Christmas wish list.
Enemy at the Gates, by William Craig, is for me an unforgettable account of the Battle of Stalingrad. The author interviewed Axis and Soviet survivors of the campaign, and used lots of other memoirs and primary sources. The book came out in the 1970’s, but I believe it still gives a good general account of the battle, along with the harrowing personal stories. I’ve only skimmed Antony Beevor’s widely-praised book which was written later, and which might have updated information.
Craig’s book is similar in style to those written by Cornelius Ryan, in which several first-hand accounts from both sides are weaved into a general history of a battle–all very readable and informative. As I recall, both Craig and Ryan were very sympathetic to men on both sides, and I doubt if such books would be approved by major publishers today. The movie “Enemy at the Gates” wasn’t nearly as good as the book. It’s a fictionalized, melodramatic account of a Soviet sniper who appears relatively briefly in Craig’s book.
I like those books based partially on the first-hand accounts written by Sir Max Hastings. His OVERLORD is a rather old book, but it is good. His book about the Vietnam War is interesting too. Soon his newest book about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, THE ABYSS, will be published. Hasting´s book about the Falkland campaign of 1982 I found not so good, but it is only my personal view, of course. Just this war itself is not so interesting for me.
Thank you for the additions, Traddles. I need the twentieth-century examples from others like you to round out the list. “Harrowing” is probably a good word for that catastrophic battle.
I also appreciated your mentioning of Johnny Tremain in Mr. Hessler’s article. It has the most vivid literary recreation of the Boston Tea Party that I can think of, and I still shudder when I think of the passage about the molten metal burning Johnny’s hand.
Yes, and Johnny Tremain doesn’t shy away from the mob tactics used by some of the “Sons of Liberty” and others of the time–something which the more thoughtful Founders opposed. Johnny is a very well-portrayed, complex character.
It’s hard to stop with the recommendations! For the “American Iliad”–the American Civil War–I believe you can’t go wrong with Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton, once very well-known but now maybe getting more forgotten in the avalanche of books on the subject. They are both careful, balanced historians and great storytellers.
Also, David Chandler is very good with his Campaigns of Napoleon and Marlborough as Military Commander. I have only skimmed Churchill’s magnum opus about his great ancestor, but it seems to stand the test of time. I know that Churchill isn’t such a popular figure in these circles, but he had his good points.
Thank you Kathryn. One of the joys of Counter-Currents is the way in which you and other contributors provide recommendations like this.
In the spirit of the the other comments, I will add a few of my own. Christopher Logue’s reworking of the Iliad, War Music, is strangely compelling. Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel is long and difficult but contains the best account of the First World War I have ever read.
Thank you, Papinian — I will have to check out “War Music”; that sounds different and intriguing. The ability to put things to music is such a mysterious (to me) but lovely talent.
I read much more books about secret services, intelligence/counter-intelligence, spies, special operations forces, disinformation and psy-wars, and they maybe should not be listed here, because are off-topic. Of the specifically military/war books published in last two years I would recommend BLIND STRATEGIST by Stephen Robinson, Australian military historian. This is a critical book about Col. John Boyd and his military theories.
Thanks for the BLIND STRATEGIST recommendation. I was unaware of this critique of Boyd, who as you probably know has cult-status in the American military & with many people who consider themselves serious students of the military art. I’m getting BLIND STRATEGIST tomorrow. Having read several pro-Boyd books, it should be interesting.
Yes, the book is good written. But it is very PC, with obligatory critics of the German generals, blaming them for the Holocaust, and with some praysing of the glorious Red Army. It contains also much criticism of Liddell Hart (whom I consider to be one of the most decent Englishmen of the 20th century) and Bill Lind, also much recpected by me.
Ah, thanks again. I also like Hart & Lind. Although there is some justifiable criticism about the self-serving nature of Wehrmacht memoirs (as if Allied memoirs are not, when they obviously are), & their tendency to over-blame Hitler for everything which went wrong, many modern historians have gone way too far in trying to debunk German military skill. In this they are following the lead of ((Gerhard Weinberg,)) who openly hates everything German because much of his family did not survive WWII.
Here I would note that Martin van Creveld is of a very high opinion of die Wehrmacht in the WW2 and considers it the best war machine of that conflict. And, yes, van Creveld is a Jew.
Thank you for this list and for the compelling account of Col. Bartow’s heroics!
I am greatly interested in Troiani’s paintings, but also in the other recommended books, including those by the commentators, especially the West Point publications and the exhaustive encyclopedia. Also, very interested in finding other versions of Homer and Thucydides.
My recommendations:
With the Old Breed, by Eugene Sledge. It is about two battles the marines fought in the Pacific, Peleliu and Okinawa.
Goodbye, Darkness, by William Manchester. It recounts the author’s visit many years later to the battlefields of his youth in the Pacific.
I thought Dispatches, by Michael Herr on Vietnam was pretty enjoyable.
I hated The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer, semi-autobiographical novel about a battle in the Pacific, I loathed the Civil War novel Killer Angels, and did not much care for Marlantes’ Vietnam novel Matterhorn, or The Devil’s Adjutant.
Thank you, Sledgehammer for the recs!
Whenever I admit to fellow Civil War-buffs that I have not read Killer Angels I get incredulous gasps and head shakes. So, since you’re one of the only people I’ve come across who hasn’t been wowed by the book, I’m curious — what turned you off?
Kathryn, I find it to be a colossal bore. I even tried it a second time in case it was my bedtime reading that didn’t do it justice. Same result. I think it was poorly written, not engaging at all. I would recommend you borrow (not buy it) if you want to give it a shot. I feel it was a waste of hard earned money. Not quite as bad as The Naked and the Dead, however. I have totally stricken off Norman Mailer from any future book purchases. Grossly overrated novelist.
Ha, well thank you for your honesty, sir. I will take it under advisement and look for a library copy if I do decide to give it a shot. I did see most of Gettysburg, apparently based on the Shaara novel, and couldn’t get past Armistead’s speech before the Charge; I knew we were going to lose again — which might not be a good sign concerning the book. It’s too personal.
Thank you for the reading sugestions. I watched some of the clip from the Waterloo movie. Napoleon and Wellington are portrayed as serious but gallant leaders. Bluecher appears to save Wellington’s bacon, dressed in black, and is immediately heard exhorting his men (the Prussian army was quite undiverse in 1815) to raise the black flag, show no pity ( or be shot by the Marshall himself ) and naturally take no prisoners. History, or more lovingly-crafted anti-Prussian propaganda? As much as we may love Albion, her perfidious elite have great trouble remembering who truly helped them to establish the Pax Brittanica.
Indeed, Blücher’s timely arrival (and the French inability to corral him or cut him off) was key to Wellington’s victory and Napoleon’s loss. Whether he said that about “no pity,” I’m not sure, but Wellington’s much more humane, “I hope to God I’ve fought my last battle” is an interesting contrast/production decision. Whether praised or maligned, the Prussians have always had a reputation for a certain war-like ethos (and I think they would have been wearing “Prussian Blue” — a dark blue, but certainly not black as they wore in the film).
Yes, Wellington, despite his comment about the “scum of the earth,” took very good care of his men, as did Marlborough. As another writer said, Wellington’s “words were harsh, but not altogether inaccurate.” For a long time, the British had to recruit from society’s “dregs,” yet Wellington appreciated the positive qualities that they developed when molded by the Army. Elizabeth Longford wrote some good biographies of Wellington in case anyone is interested.
Although I admire Napoleon for many things, he was responsible for a huge loss of life, French and otherwise. He had so many gifts, yet maybe one deep flaw was that he did not know when to quit.
Total Napoleon apologist: I plead guilty.
Well, the military history books are good, but one always wants to add more. I would suggest three: J.F.C. Fuller’s The Decisive Battles of the Western World, ending with WWII. A. very thorough and thoughtful analysis of military leaders and battles, especially on what he considers the Great Captains of history, but also including the economic and social life behind the wars and armies.
Another book I like is Len Deighton’s Blood, Tears and Folly, An Objective Look at WWII. Deighton has a very good analysis of weapons, weapons systems, and economic factors that influenced the war. It really deflates the concept WWII was a great crusade for freedom against fascism. He also explains how countries developed their weapons systems, and how these, as well as economics and minerals, determined battles and outcomes. For example, the allies always had oil, and the Axis powers were forever trying to get it and keep it. Also, Germany had excellent technology and scientific leadership, but the Nazi party stunted the full use of that, much as British lack of imagination led to them being wiped out at Singapore. Very nuts and bolts of war. Deighton says wars are won by the commander who has the best logistics and can deliver the equipment to his troops.
Another book of Deighton, Blitzkrieg, has a masterful description of the 1940 campaign, and demonstrates how Blitzkrieg was as much an improvisation as masterful concept.
Other comments: I didn’t much like Naked and the Dead either, although it had some good vignettes. Nor did I like The Killer Angels. To be honest, I thought it kind of bland and overly worshipful of the Confederate command. To be honest, I read Gettysburg, a 1951 young people’s book (Landmark series) by MacKinlay Kantor, which was well written and offered diverse views of the battle, including civilians. Would have made a better movie.
Before Stephen Ambrose wrote his Band of Brothers, he wrote Crazy Horse and Custer (1975), The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors. Good military and social history of whites and Indians, and no P.C. Very good prose.
Waterloo? I finally saw the movie a year ago. It was tough to see when it was released, and did terrible at the box office, so was ditched. I enjoyed it, but wonder if Steiger’s Napoleon was all that great. Plummer was a good Wellington.
I thought the Prussians were kind of neglected, but Waterloo was originally a four hour long movie, and was really chopped up for release. It would have done better as a TV movie, had they had them then. Interesting cameo by Orson Welles as Louis XVII. The film might have been done in two nights, as the Russian War and peace was, but that was a tough sell to movie theaters.
MAX HASTINGS ABYSS: THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS 1962
In 1983 the USSR reckoned that NATO’s Able Archer exercise was a smokescreen and that NATO was planning to deliver a genuine nuclear first strike. So we have to ask, was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis “the most perilous event in history” or is Max Hastings just trying to boost his book sales? When compared with NATO’s Able Archer Exercise in 1983, we doubt the Cuban Missile crisis was “the most perilous event in history” but such a comparison may be splitting hairs as both events came perilously close to starting a nuclear war.
Nevertheless, as to be expected now, Max Hastings certainly did his chosen non-fiction topic justice in this book whose subject matter would be riveting had you not read about it beforehand. The extent to which John F Kennedy took his NATO partners into his confidence during the Cuban crisis remains debatable. In 1962, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, colloquially known as SuperMac, was supposedly JFK’s chief confidant and adviser throughout the crisis. What were the consequences of that?
For starters it meant that anything JFK (via the CIA) and/or SuperMac shared with MI6 about how best to manage the crisis was also shared with Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro via Kim Philby who was then in his heyday. In addition, Dr Richard Alan Fairclough (ex MI1 and a leading British scientist) was a close confidant of SuperMac. Richard Fairclough (aka Roger Burlington) featured in The Burlington Files series of fact based spy novels which were centred on the life and times of his son Bill Fairclough (aka Edward Burlington, MI6 codename JJ).
The absence of some of the forgoing information in any book of note about the Cuban missile crisis might raise questions as to its completeness. On the other hand, one could ask were the Fairclough family involved in the seventies in the Haitian equivalent to the Cuban Bay of Pigs? Who knows but just because someone claims they know the truth is never the whole story! Best read Beyond Enkription, the only novel published to date in The Burlington Files series, to find out what has been disclosed to date on all these issues.
A Max Hastings book I like is his The Korean War. Very well-written and informative, and it offers a lot of insights from the British point of view in the Commonwealth units fighting under the U.N….really under the Americans for all practical purposes.
We love Deighton too and the Ipcress File is compelling reading, but I think Len Deighton’s most enthralling book by far was Funeral in Berlin. Deighton took it upon himself to counter both Ian Fleming and David Cornwell aka John Le Carré with what I call “raw espionage”. It is rumoured that on the few occasions they met, near nuclear arguments ensued. They had a lot in common as spy fiction writers although paradoxically while on occasion Deighton arguably produced the most realistic stuff he had no direct experience of military intelligence. In that vein it is a shame more espionage thrillers aren’t fact based. Courtesy of being factual extra dimensions are added. First, you can read about what’s in the novel in press cuttings and history books. Second, if even just marginally autobiographical, the author has the opportunity to convey his/her genuine hopes and fears as experienced in real life.
An example of such a “real” thriller is Beyond Enkription, the first espionage novel or memoir in The Burlington Files series by Bill Fairclough (MI6 codename JJ) aka Edward Burlington. It’s worth mentioning in this context because, coincidentally, some critics have likened its protagonist JJ to a “posh and sophisticated Harry Palmer” and the first novel in the series is indisputably noir, maybe even Deightonesque but unquestionably anti-Bond. It’s worth checking out this enigmatic and elusive thriller. Not being a remake it may have eluded you! It’s a must for all spy illuminati so not being a remake I would be surprised if it had eluded you!
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