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Riding the Retreat - Mons to Marne: 1914 Revisited

$18.95

By Richard Holmes
Published in 2007 by Pimlico,UK
Softcover, 313 Pages
Size - 20.5cm * 13.5cm

The retreat of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) 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.

This is an account of the author and his four friends' journey following the route taken by the British Expeditionary Force, nearly 80 years previously, on its retreat from the German offensive at Mons. The ride took them from the Belgian border, over the battlefields of the World War I, across the plains and rivers of Northern France, to the banks of the Marne where, in September 1914, the BEF played its part in General Joffre's counter-attack against von Moltke's army. This is a blend of contemporary testimony with an analysis of the 1914 military campaign.

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'

Illustrated with 8 pages of B&W photos and 11 maps.