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Books

Meeting the Enemy, by Richard Van Emden; 1914, by Allan Mallinson - review

5 October 2013

9:00 AM

5 October 2013

9:00 AM

Meeting the Enemy: The Human Face of the Great War Richard van Emden

Bloomsbury, pp.384, £20

1914: Fight the Good Fight Allan Mallinson

Bantam, pp.503, £25

The Great War was an obscene and futile conflict laying waste a generation and toppling emperors. Yet here are two books that situate the horrors of trench warfare within a much larger perspective. One argues that the war had a forgotten ‘human face’. The other that it might all have had a very different outcome.

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