Norman’s Conquest

Historian Norman Stone might be known as much for his outspoken views as his scholarship - but after what seems like an eternity, he’s back with a corker of a book about the First World War. In a mere 40,000 words, his World War One: A Short History brings more clarity to this complex, much-written about subject than some historians manage to do in books three or four times as long.

Stone is as adept at painting the broad brush strokes as he is at coining snappy one liners, for instance the opening line to the chapter on 1914: ‘In four years, the world went from 1870 to 1940.’ (A reference to how tanks and aircraft were going into battle just four years after cavalry rode off to war.) Just about every page is likely to enlighten the reader in one way or another: for instance, one page notes how the generals that led the armies into battle were by and large born in the 1850s, an era of horses and carts; another points out that the German Army was roughly the same size as France’s in 1914, despite their disparity in population (65 million compared to 40 million).