Gallipoli

As we approach the end of a century marred by too many tragically ill-conceived battlefield operations (and it seems there may still be time for one or two more before we move into the next millennium), Gallipoli still stands out as one of the most evocative in British history. As Robert Rhodes James writes "it is not difficult to see why Gallipoli exerts such a powerful grip on the interest and imagination of the British people. The setting, the challenge, the response to that challenge are alike enthralling." No campaign has aroused fiercer controversy, both in its planning and execution, and, over the years, in the accounts of historians and those who played an active part in the events. Since its first publication in 1965, Robert Rhodes James's detailed and balanced study has come to be recognised as one of the definitive accounts of the eight-month campaign to overrun the Gallipoli peninsula. Early chapters reveal the fascinating manoeuvrings within the War Council that led to the ill- fated plan, setting the scene for an extensively researched and thoroughly balanced account of the actual operation. Diaries and letters of men who fought in the action are brilliantly used to bring home the realities, as much as that is genuinely possible, of being involved in such a hard and bloody campaign, while the book is well supplied with genuine photographs from the time and has no lack of explanatory maps which are particularly vital to any proper understanding of Gallipoli's significance.