Product Description

The retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Mons in the early months of the First World War is one of the great dramas of European history. Blending his recreation of the military campaign with contemporary testimony and an account of his own ride over the route, Richard Holmes takes the reader on a unique journey - to glimpse the summer the old world ended.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63528 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
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 Reading Universities, 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, Firing Line, The Second World War in Photographs and Fatal Avenue: A Traveller's History of Northern France and Flanders (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'.

Customer Reviews

An exemplar of military history writing
Although this is one of Richard Holmes' earliest works and now re-released, 'Riding the Retreat' remains a unique amalgam of travel book and military history of the most enjoyable, if somewhat quirky, type. As a detailed view of the opening moves of August and September 1914, I can only praise this book. Both strategy and more detailed anecdotes are supported by snippets of archival material that may already be familiar to those who are devotees of Richard Holmes' other books. The nature of the BEF, its social structure and the individual battles are brought to life as Holmes and his companions explore the battlefields in a way as never before. But what is different is the often humourous stories of this, Professor Holmes' equestrian adventure with colleagues, covering the countryside in Belgium and France of the BEF's retreat. Details of saddle soreness, riding through fields and forests and the antics of his own horse jostle with a personal narrative that would grace any travelogue.

Professor Holmes' passion for the ordinary soldier comes to the fore as well as his respect for those coping with a conflict that was outside of all of their expectations. Admittedly I am a fan of Professor Holmes and his writing however I would personally recommend this as his finest work to date and, for me, this is the definitive history of those first weeks from the BEF's perspective.

Thoroughly recommended.

Richard Holmes' passion for history is without equal
A spectacular book. It takes the form of a travelogue about Holmes' own journey retracing the steps of the BEF (as the 1914 army was called) From preparing to go to France to the retreat from Mons. This book displays Holmes' total command of both historical fact and story telling. At no time does he become more important that his subject matter (so rare in travel writing), as he skilfully unravels what it must have been like to go to war in 1914, using diaries, letters and regimental biographies as well as first hand experiences, eighty years on. It is an absolutely riveting read.

A Must Have History Book
Anyone interested in Military History, particularly the first World War, should have this book in their collection.It is of a time in history when we still went to war on horseback,so Richard Holmes follows the retreat on his own horse together with his companions, from Mons in Belgium to the River Marne in France that the BEF marched in that late hot summer of 1914.Because this is the first major action the British Army are involved with, it has become lost in the overall picture of the first war as most people associate the trench system of stalemate with the Western Front.But Richard Holmes has produced an exellent book on an army so ill trained and equipped for modern warfare, that it was steamrollered into a long and bloody retreat.It shows the courage and bravery of men and officers in the field of battle and stupidity and ignorance from people at the top.It contains some interesting photographs, not least one showing a discussion between officers of the 2nd Scottish Rifles where they are wearing a design of sword that had been probably used in war 200 years before.One of my all time favourite books.Highly Recommended!