232. Battleground Christmas Special
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Hello and welcome to this special Christmas edition of the Battleground podcast with me Saul David and Roger Morehouse. Sadly our regular co-host Patrick Bishop is otherwise engaged but in his stead I have a fabulous cast of guests to discuss the best history books of 2024. They are Jesse Charles award-winning historian whose books include God's Traitor and the Siege of Loyalty House and Richard Foreman author digital publisher and all-round literary impresario.

Welcome, everyone. Jessie, I think we'll start with you. We're not being prescriptive about how many books. I think you're happy to talk about three, aren't you? Which one do you want to kick off with? It's really hard. It's been a really good year, I think, but I'm going to go chronologically. It's Helen Caster's The Eagle and the Heart, the tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. Obviously, we know about them from Shakespeare. They were first cousins. They were born within three months of each other in 1367.

And Richard II had everything. He had birthright. He had the whole country behind him, but he was an appalling tyrant. Henry IV had everything in terms of being a good ruler, but he didn't have a birthright. And he usurps Richard II, as we know from Shakespeare. Helen writes this book.

so beautifully. It's their parallel lives, but it's also a study, she calls it, in the psychology of power. And it feels very contemporary. Lots of great battle scenes. She's always been good at them. I remember reviewing her Joan of Art biography and she was outstanding then. She still is now. It took her, I think, a decade to write this book. And you can tell the scholarship is impeccable. The writing as it always is with Helen is so...

It's hard to put your finger on why it's so good. It's so precise and elegant and graceful. And yet it feels effortless, which I'm sure it isn't. But it feels like it because it's so fluent. And she does something which you don't get that often with writing. She sort of writes, she uses italics a lot. So it feels almost conspiratorial in that she's sort of working through her arguments with you.

And it's just a pleasure to read. It's a very big book. I read on holiday, but it was a joy. And I relished every page. And I totally recommend it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's read it. Yeah, no, I read it when it came out. And I picked it as a book of the year in another podcast, funnily enough. I mean, it's almost two books in one. You get this, you know, superb biographies of

of Richard II and Henry IV. And it proves how well done Shakespeare in terms of he kind of got some of these kind of psychological insights correct. But I mean, she picks that Richard II was just an awful ruler. It's scholarship and style. I think that it's quite rare. And lots of other historians have just praised this book because it does...

fill in a gap, I believe. I mean, Jessie, you all know this more than us. But, you know, in terms of this book will last for the next 30 years plus, just in terms of, you know, kind of filling a hole in terms of the kind of scholarship and our island story almost. Yeah, it's really hard to make medieval history as compelling as this. San Jose does it very well. And we should mention his Henry V as well, which is a great sequel to this

But you don't have the sources that you have in modern history. You don't have the intimacy. So to make it, as she says, a study in the psychology of power, I mean, it really is impressive. You feel like you know them. You feel like you understand what's going on. And yeah, I'm an early modernist, but I sort of wish I'd studied medieval history. I mean, I believe Helen has medieval French, which I know from speaking for Roger, I know he doesn't have that.

And I think just basically in terms of just the scholarship, the hard work done over sort of 10 years, but it's not been wasted. It's a powerhouse book. I haven't, no, but 10 years is astonishing. I mean, just that degree of engagement over 10 years on a single project. I mean, it can be less is more. It's interesting that we've got Jessie here because she has been meant to spend a few years on her own books. But in the case of some authors, it's worth the wait. And I think with Helen's book,

I remember her saying as she got towards the end of it, I hope she doesn't mind me mentioning this, that this book's almost killed me because as a sort of mental stress of tackling this formidable subject, because anything that Shakespeare's written about, you're on a hiding to nothing.

frankly, aren't you? But she does it so beautifully. And it's really, you know, you mentioned the psychological study. It's a psychological study for me. How difficult is it to get under the skin of two medieval monarchs, given the positive sources? I mean, it's an astonishing act of not just scholarship, but also imagination, which in my view is important to every historian, whether we like to

admitted or not. So Roger, we'll come on to you then. Give us your first selection. Oh, sorry, Richard, I thought that you were going with that as a selection. No, so never let it be said that Richard Foreman's afraid of cliches or being predictable. But one of the sort of best books of the year, particularly for this kind of battleground audience as well, is Ben McIntyre's The Siege. It's sold in its thousands. It's incredibly good. It's just entertaining. I mean, he's one of the only kind of authors that's

that does humor well with history. He's, you know, all the sources are there. He gets under the skin of the terrorists or the major kind of, you know, people, some are dead, some are alive now. And I mean, I was up reading it till about three o'clock in the morning the other night where the last sort of hundred pages deals with, you know, in a sense that taking the embassy,

And I mean, not all went well with it. I mean, we have, you know, famously, there's the SAS guy that got caught up with his rope and was sort of, you know, singed, more than singed.

And when they went in as well, it was, you know, as confusing for the SAS in some ways as it was the combatants and the hostages. But even when they went in, it's like, you know, this one guy just shot a rubbish bin because he thought he might be a terrorist. And there are just some lovely detail and color. I mean, sort of it's, I mean, it's just absolutely sort of blockbuster stuff. I mean, Ben's even good writing about the snooker match of Alex Higgins and

Cliff Foreman at the time. I mean, he can read and write about... Which we've interrupted, wasn't it? That is what's new, yes. Yeah, I mean, it was... Roger and I will remember it.

I was, I don't, I mean, I was alive. I was about five years old, et cetera. I have a vague memory of it, but not that much. But even just the, it's very funny. So he's gone around, he's collected all the sort of, you know, he's done the interviews and collected all the takes, et cetera. And there's just one funny moment where they get the policeman out, Trevor Locke, who's the kind of unsung hero of the piece. And he thought it was the police that went in because the SAS weren't really known then. I mean, this is what it is, is the SAS became famous because of it.

And then he kind of got there, he sort of breathlessly said, you know, I'll thank you. It's like the police SWAT, basically. And he said, you guys were great. You know, the police SWAT were great. And the guy from the police SWAT, he says, you wanker. That was the SAS. LAUGHTER

It's top-notch, yeah. He does a brilliant job with it. And it's interesting, you alluded to it there, Richard, but it was, to a large extent, almost the founding myth of the modern SAS, wasn't it? That was their story. That's why they sort of burst. That was their sort of founding moment. And they did it spectacularly well. But as you say, not without hiccups. No, and even their kit wasn't the greatest. I mean, they said, you know,

it looked good but it was fucking useless so they had their holsters for their browning pistols and they were too large so they were using masking tape to fasten their pistols it's so british isn't it yeah special forces one quick aside um this book has rattled a few cages within the sf community because the sbs who as you know i haven't got a little bit of an insight into having written

their story in the Second World War are now saying, well, hold on a second. If some of the sources for that, I mean, some have come out already, as we know, but some of the new sources, including Hector Gullen, who'd never spoken before. So this is quite a coup for Ben to get in. But of course, the SBS are now saying we've been told there's a denotice on anything to do with post Second World War.

and now you're authorizing or at least not stopping a book that's quoting new people, particularly officers. So they're not very happy about it. This may all work to my benefit because they're now saying, well, surely we can get an authorized history of the SBS in the Falklands. Well, we'll wait and see what happens with that. Roger, your choice.

Thank you, Saul. There have been a few that have come to my attention this year, and particularly for the Battleground audience as well. A few mentions in Dispatches. I've got to mention Nick Lloyd's Eastern Front, which is...

a vast, a huge book. I mean, unbelievably thorough. It's the first real investigation of the Eastern Front of the First World War. Really, I suppose, since in its scale, really since Norman Stone's from years ago, it's absolutely comprehensive. It's a dense history book. And I mean that in a good way, but it really is fantastically thorough. Well written as well. Roger, does it change the way we think about the story of the

the First World War, at least the narrative of the First World War. I think it puts the relationship between the Germans and Austria-Hungary actually in quite an interesting light. You know, how the Austro-Hungarians really worked as, you know, the poor relations to German forces always needed backing up. I don't think that's necessarily new, but he illustrates it really, really well. Lots of good examples. Lots of, you know, war diaries and sort of, you know, material from high command and so on. The

The Austrians really were not up to the demands of modern warfare, really, particularly on the Eastern Front, the Galician Front. And then, of course, you know, in the Alps, in the Tyrol and in the outside VJ, that conflict is described really, really well. And it's astonishingly brutal.

So it's an absolute tour de force. It's a brilliant book. So that's one that I will certainly mention. Briefly, of course, yours as well, Sky Warriors came out in 2024. Brilliant book. British Airborne Forces in the Second World War, which we've talked about before, first half of the year, but that deserves a mention as well. With a beautiful intro. Very atmospheric. Thank you. Sorry, Roger, do you want to... So those are mentioned almost in parentheses. The one I want to mention is, I think I mentioned it before, but Al Murray's Armour.

which I think is really, really good. Genuinely good. I'm the last one to sort of big up, you know, what we might call celebrity history. This is not that, right? This is the product of a lifelong fascination on his behalf with Arnhem. He's really gone into it in tremendous depth. And what he presents is the history of a single day, effectively. So where traditionally we look at Arnhem as this sort of doomed escapade,

And it's doomed almost from minute one or day one. Everybody knows what the end result is when they're reading the preface. He kind of gets away from that, if you like, the tyranny of hindsight by just looking at a single day when, to a degree, almost anything is possible. It could still have worked. With the following wind, it could still have worked in a way that it was envisaged. And he tells that story tremendously well.

And it gets him out of that kind of doom loop of, you know, this is all going to fail. And then you end up just, you know, following the narrative of all the reasons why it's going to fail. Because you and everybody else reading it knows it's going to. So he escapes that by just looking at a single day, which I think is actually, you know, sort of philosophically in terms of the philosophy of history is kind of revolutionary. I mean, ironically, does he inject humor into it?

No, there's a certain lightness. It's been the Helen Caster's book. There was a Raya Hiva there. I think they're always shabby. You should have an eye to the ridiculousness of it. Yeah, and you've got to love books when you can just tell that they enjoyed writing it. Yeah, and I think that comes along with it as well. Yeah. And there's all the characters in that book as well. So I think it's really well done. And I think actually, as I said, in sort of philosophical terms, it's doing something pretty novel, I think. And I really enjoyed it.

And it could be a template. I think I asked him, actually, I interviewed him at least once, if not twice about that book. And I think I asked him,

you could you know this this you could follow this up with obviously different stories and he seemed aware of the possibility but wasn't necessarily going to go down that track which is the shame really because i agree with you roger i think he's done something which turns the normal view of the battle or at least the beats of the battle on its head in effect he's created a scenario where you're with these guys wherever they happen to be on that day because he bounces around the different locations and

and the day is unfolding in real time, and it's really cleverly done. There's a bit of setup, obviously, and there's a bit of aftermath that I shot. But in the end, it's those 24 hours. But he gets away from that predetermined sense of doom, which I think otherwise overhangs all of it. I mean, I dare say they'll read his book and read ours. If he can introduce more people to history within World War II or that battle, people will read more. Is that a role for Kiefer Sutherland?

I mean, you know, it's done very, very well. It's sold well. And really, you've got to say deservedly so. Okay, so my, I'm going to give a couple of mention in dispatches to start off with Naples 44, Keith Lowe. It's been beautifully done. War liberation and chaos is his subtitle. I mean, what he does so well is look at the dark underbelly of war, not from the perspective of the soldiers, which is what most military historians or historians of war do, but the civilians.

and it's really the consequence of war on Naples, which is a city he loves. I mean, what's interesting about both this book and the book you've just mentioned, Roger, is this almost close personal connection the authors have with it, which isn't necessarily a good thing. You can be a little bit too close to your subject, but in Naples it is because you can tell in Keith's writing the love of this subject. His best known book, I suppose, is Savage Continent, which is

It sort of follows, but on a much broader panorama, a similar sort of story, which is the effect of the Second World War on civilians. Well, this is doing the same thing within the 1939 to 1945 parameters. He has had a bit of stick with people saying, well, you know, you're a bit harsh on the Allies and what else are they expected to do? They're trying to fight a war at the same time as get the city back on track.

And it's probably true that he is, you know, almost because he loves the Italians and he loves Neapolitans. He is horrified at everything that happens to them. But, you know, that's war, unfortunately. I think that's always a consequence. I think, you know, to be fair, I probably did the same thing with my Berlin book that, you know, where you spend that time writing about those people, there's an inevitable, you know, sense of empathy with them. It can't be otherwise. And with the landscapes.

Yeah, exactly. So then, you know, you end up empathizing and anything that happens to them, you almost tend to take personally. So I think that's kind of an inevitable product of doing the work on an individual place like that. Did you, I mean, do you feel that with some of yours that you...

kind of empathize maybe a bit too much for people under siege yeah i did although it's kind of a ruins a basing house the siege of basing house it's ruins there's not much left so it's not so much sort of a you know the beauty of a once great building but yeah i did and i certainly empathize with the people who are you know followed from london to hampshire and and

And there was one particular person who was this apothecary who I just loved, who just had the zest for life, you know, the furious joy of life itself. And he ended up being this great hero. And even though he was very sort of unassuming. And yeah, so you do and you almost sort of mourn with them and you mourn the building when it goes down. Yeah.

Yeah. And yet you have to be objective, don't you? Yeah. And therein lies the problem. Yeah. Well, just going back, funnily enough, to the siege, there's a kind of character called Ron Morris, who's the caretaker of the building. Yeah. 15 years plus caretaker of the building. And he can't help but try and continue his job. So he's tried to sort of raise the spirits. He's forever giving people biscuits, et cetera. And then at one point he asked the terrorists, is it OK if I hoover?

I mean, it's just really... Absolutely lovely. Okay, so that's one of my mentions in this package. The other one is James Holland's Casino 44. This sounds a bit like a gold hanger loving, doesn't it? Isn't it, James? Just rolling along. He's the co-host of our sister podcast with Al Murray. But, I mean, James has been a fixture in writing brilliant, compelling military history for a long time. And Casino 44 is really the...

end of his Italian escapade, three books, really, he's written on Italy. You know, you might think you could do it in one, but he's taken three. And what he does so brilliantly is he picks a small cast of characters and follows the story from their perspective. And it's multifaceted. So that one will be, you know, a general, one will be a German Air Force officer, one will be an Italian partisan. And you get this wonderfully kind of rounded,

picture in this very kind of visceral and kind of touchable way, I suppose. The bigger the period, the less you can get down to that sort of detail. And my history seems to be getting increasingly bigger and

perspective which produces difficulties of its own and you lose the intimacy of the story to a certain extent which is what I think he does so well and the third book which I shouldn't really be mentioning in dispatches because it is one of the great pieces of history of the last 30 or 40 years but The Price of Victory by N.A.M. Roger and we've been waiting a good 10 years for this book to come out

It's the third and final volume of this monumental three-volume naval history of Britain. The total series has taken 30 years to write. It's one of the great pieces of scholarship. And he brings the story not quite up to date because...

I think it's reasonably well known. Anyone who knows history knows that NAM Roger hasn't been that well recently. So it must have taken an incredible effort to even get it to 1945, which is where it finishes. And then he's got a final chapter in which he deals with the follow-up story, as it were, to now. But it's just beautifully done, like the last two previous volumes.

So he's gone from 660 to 1945 and the whole history of Britain's Navy and Britain as a kind of naval power in that time from operations to social history to government. I mean, you know, there's no facet if you were interested in naval history that isn't covered in that book. So The Price of Victory. I mean, it's got to be one of the history books of the year. And as a whole, it's like up there with kind of Jonathan Sumption's series as well. It's a monumental achievement.

I mean, he's an incredibly impressive human being. I mean, over the years, I've gone to many a history talk and I've listened to a couple of lectures that he's given. And the command of the subject is also very sort of dry and witty. I mean, I spoke to him when Command of the Ocean came out. Yeah, and he basically said, no, it's going to take me a while because I want to read all the sources.

And it wasn't just there. It was just, he wanted to read all the sources. And yeah, I mean, it's obviously got all the plaudits and just let's hope, you know, if people have got a bit of time at Christmas, read this book. Yeah.

As well as the others. Exactly. So we're talking about some real legends in history. And I think it's unlikely he'll produce another book. So that needs to be savored. But it gives you love, you're unable. And it's partly credit to Alan Lane. It's brave commissioning as well. To allow the people the time and the space and to get the right person for the right subject. Jessie, your number two. Oh, I just reviewed this. It's very fresh in my mind. It's called The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad. What?

by Simon Parkin. And it's another book about a siege. I think there's something about sieges. I do. There's something about sieges that brings out the best and worst of humanity.

I know World War does that, but I think it's this sort of intense atmosphere of it. And it's almost like this sort of experiment on the human condition. You're taking away food and drink. You're cutting off communications. You're throwing in bombs and disinformation and disease. And it's the survivor of the fittest and people become animals and all they can think about is food. And it's horrific.

But you also get these incredible moments of self-sacrifice. And this book, the subtitle is A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City Under Siege. It's about the siege of Leningrad, which, I mean, all sieges are hell. But it's got to be up there in terms of the worst and the bloodiest and the costliest. And the longest. Yeah, it was almost 900 days all in. And...

At a conservative estimate, three quarters of a million people died, mainly civilians. And this story focuses...

which I think is such a good bit of storytelling, on something called the Plant Institute. You can tell I like my apothecaries and sieges. But it was basically the world's largest and first siege bank. And the founder had actually just been arrested, so disappeared. And he's in prison being tortured and eventually obviously killed. And so his fate is sort of, his story is told in tandem with the siege of Leningrad.

But his followers, and he is almost Christ-like, they have thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of seeds and nuts and potatoes and tubers and grains. And they don't eat a single one, even while the city is starving, but also while they're starving themselves. So there's one anecdote, story,

the ground nut expert. It's slightly absurd. Some of this again, as all sieges are, he's, he's the expert in ground nuts and he's cataloging all the nuts and looking after the seeds and they have to fight off looters and rats and frost, everything. But he, he dies of starvation and in his dead hand is a bag of nuts that could have saved his life. So the sort of the, the dilemma, the question at the heart of this book is, you know, what would you do? And, and,

He doesn't really, Simon Parkin doesn't, he sort of hedges his bets. He sort of understands how you could sacrifice yourself and your own life for science and for future generations and species. So it's all quite relevant and resonant.

But how you can let other people starve without distributing the nuts is amazing. It's very Russian. I read it as well. I actually hosted Simon at Tring Book Festival to talk about this. And it's a fabulous book. Absolutely right. And that scene that you just mentioned is what I, if you hadn't mentioned it, I would have done because that's the one that sticks in my mind as well. But that question at the end, you know, I mean, I still think to my mind, there's a sort of a, had I been in charge of that institute, I certainly would have given it all out.

Don't you think they would have squirreled away at Nuttall too, though? I kind of think it's a very neat, sober story. Well, obviously, in that example that you gave, they didn't. I mean, he had salvation in his head, literally. But I just, I found that that's an element of, in a way, this sort of cruelty of science, because it's so abstract, right? It abstracts itself necessarily from the human.

And you're in a city with a million people starving to death. I mean, that's just so vital. I am a talented factor in as well. This is your purpose. This is your job. Yeah, absolutely. Of course it does. I mean, even though they are, even though the scientists themselves are conflicted because that, like you said, their boss and the man that sort of led them and founded the institute had been arrested by the FKVD and had disappeared into the system, right? And never to emerge. Right.

So there's an element of conflict there in their own minds, but still they're Soviet scientists. So the mentality is, you know, science is everything, progress is everything, and the people are kind of dispensable. And that's the essence of the Soviet system, because it was about, it told itself it was about progress, in inverted commas, and the people were dispensable.

And it's the same mentality being played out there. So even though what he describes is kind of, is weirdly heroic, what came across to me was a really nasty, dark undertone of misanthropy in it. I totally agree. It's troubling. And actually, all credit to Simon Parkin because he doesn't let them off the hook. It could have been a sort of another Shostakovich kind of story about everyone in unison and sacrifice. And he doesn't...

I'd be interested to know in the talk, he gave a bit more away about what he would have done, because I suspect he's definitely troubled also. It was beautifully fudged. Yeah. But it's also it's so interesting to read with thoughts of lockdown, which in a way is the other way with lockdown. They put the lives of the people right now first rather than future lives and future suffering, economics or whatever.

But then you think about the environment, and of course we must think about the future and the planet. So it's very interesting. It's a very good book. It touches on a lot of very sort of seminal issues. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment when we'll hear more from the books of 2024. The sounds of the season can often sound like this. So when are we getting some grandkids? But with Hilton's season to stay sale, they could sound a bit more like this.

Or this. Stay and save up to 20% off when you book before January 5th at Hilton.com.

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Right, let's move on. Richard? Well, for the second book, I suppose we have the sort of elephant in the room of Patrick not being here. And I covered this book earlier on in the year. I mean, there's no cradling of nuts in this book from Patrick, but it's got plenty of other things. So, I mean, although it's billed as the liberation of Paris, it basically covers the whole of the occupation. Yeah, Paris 44, though. Yeah, yeah.

It's super. I mean, it's kind of one of his best written books. I mean, he is a great kind of Francophile as well. And he's unearthed some great stories. A lot of the books we're talking about where it's about the human story. So he focuses in. I mean, we've got Ernest Hemingway in it who is not that human, really. He's a sort of, you know, even for an author, he's a narcissist. Yeah.

And then even J.D. Salinger's in it. I mean, one of the heroes of the hour is kind of Eisenhower as well. I mean, you know, obviously, Gord has come off terribly well. And what's it got? It's got the lot. Yeah, it's got the military stuff. I mean, even the, Roger, you all know he's named the Nazi in charge. Von Jokers. Yes, was quite emollient in the end, I believe. Yeah, he was. And, you know,

not necessarily a hero of the hour, but... But not necessarily a villain either. Yeah, I loved it. I mean, again, there's some real wry humour in there. It's just incredibly well structured. It takes you through the story and thumbs up. Yeah, I mean, I know he's not here, but he's...

He's a great writer. He is. The listeners of the podcast will know, because we've already discussed this on the podcast around about the time it came out, and I hope that made a difference in getting it into the Sunday Times top ten. It can't have done it any harm. But, I mean, I mentioned on the podcast then, and I'm repeating it, it was a book Patrick was born to write. He loves the French. He loves France. He loves Paris in particular. He doesn't give the French an easy ride, though. They're the villains. In many ways, I mean...

it's weird where, you know, he's, he's kind of wants to admire the communists, but also they're a bit dim in some ways and or nasty and others. But then, you know, I mean, you know, the sort of regiment that sort of liberates is the Spanish. Yeah. It,

Yeah, the Vanguard. It's got lots of these kind of, you know, lovely kind of twists of history. Roger, moving on to your... So maybe a bit surprising, but again, slightly tailored towards our audience. Mark Gagliotti, who's one of my favorite commentators, particularly on Ukraine and Russia now.

He had a book out this year called Forged in War, Military History of Russia. Just come out last month, I think it was. And really, really well done. I mean, he's, so academic chops are second to none on this. He's a brilliant authority on Russian history and current affairs regarding Russia and Ukraine. And he makes the point through this that to a large extent, you know, he goes right back to, you know, Russia's foundation effectively, but

and sees its history through the prison of war. And he shows that, you know, to a large extent, Russia, because of its, you know, geographical position, because of the fact that it doesn't necessarily have natural frontiers, that idea of it being defined by war with its neighbors all the way through its existence is actually one that's quite persuasive. And he goes into all that sort of development of, you know, what used to be known as warfare a la Russe, you know, basically that if you've got a

You don't necessarily have the best technology, but you have lots and lots of men. So what are you going to do? And this is not, you know, we might think of that as a Soviet phenomenon or an imperial Russian phenomenon. It's not. It goes right back to Peter the Great and beyond. And the phrase making war a la Russe comes from Peter the Great's time.

because they knew he just threw men at a problem and, you know, half of them wouldn't survive. But that's not his problem. You know, Stalin said, no man, no problem. So, you know, he sort of explains where that sort of mentality came from. And again, it is really absolutely solid and it's giving us a lovely...

perspective on Russian history that I think helps to explain to some extent what's going on today. At least it's one of the drivers behind... Well, last year we were kind of... Yes, again, very... They know their subject. Yeah, absolutely.

And Gagliotti, you know, absolutely impeccable on the sources and all the rest of it. All right. So my last selection, I'm not sure if we're on to last selection, but this is my last selection. We'll wrap it all up at the end. So this is my final selection. And this is a bit of a left field one in the sense that

It's an ex-colleague of mine from the University of Glasgow called Evan Maudsley, who was then professor of international history while I was doing my PhD. And he used to be known as an expert of the Eastern Front in the Second World War. So he'd written a lot of books about fighting there. And then he decided to pivot. He is actually American by birth, decided to pivot to write about the Pacific and blow me down if he doesn't do it really well. So this book is called Supremacy at Sea, Task Force 58-1.

and the Central Pacific Victory, which is not a particularly prepossessing title. But what he does in this book is he absolutely homes in on this key moment, this key turning point in the story, in this grim story of the Pacific War, which is the creation of this carrier strike force, which the Americans do because they can. I mean, I'll give you some details. This U.S. Navy's

Task Force 58, which is the carrier strike force, 16 aircraft carriers, okay? Not one or two or three. Japan at one stage had five or six. This is 16 aircraft carriers, 1,000 combat aircraft, and an armada of escorts. And the story is how it moves from the early stages of the year, that is 1944, to

to move all the way across the Pacific, 3,500 mile dash to the islands of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian, where one of the biggest naval clashes of the Second World War, the Battle of the Philippine Seas takes place. This battle is not as well known as Midway. It's not as well known as Leyte Gulf, and it should be because it's really the key story of the Second World War in which

Japanese naval air power, and you use aircraft carriers to project air power, is destroyed forever. And they are a done deal after that story. And he tells it brilliantly because, well, because in spite of the fact that Evan is an academic and academics can sometimes get bogged down by detail, but he writes, in my view, as fluently about combat as he does about logistics.

And I reviewed this, I think, for the Daily Telegraph earlier this year. And my final paragraph was, and this sums it up, in Supremacy at Sea, he has produced an important, insightful book about the most powerful naval force in history and the battle that ushered in, as he put it, a new global era of sea power. And the Americans still hold number one status in sea power. To this day, maybe that will change with the Chinese. Do you, can you, should you think they should be roused again to

you know, in a sense, further cement that legacy with what's going on in the world. The projection about... We're blurring into the Ukraine podcast a little bit here. Well, not just the Ukraine, of course. I mean, we're talking... Yes, no... Potentially Taiwan and the Middle East. If you talk to any senior military man in the States today, particularly naval, but also army, their focus is on the Far East. Their focus is on China and the Pacific. And...

And Ukraine, one of the reasons why when Trump comes in and he can say, well, Ukraine, the Europeans need to do more about that, that's not really an American problem. He's right and he's wrong. He's wrong in the sense that everything's joined up. And if you have all these authoritarian regimes, they kind of get sustenance and literal support from each other. So you can't allow one to have a victory, otherwise it'll impact on the other.

But the other issue is he's right in the sense that the real focus, the long-term focus for America is the Far East and China. China is an existential threat to America in a way Russia never can be. China's climate, Russia's the weather. You mentioned good writing. So people might be listening who are writing books or want to write military history books. What makes good military history writing? Too much exaggeration? Reportage?

What do you guys think? I think you need, to be fair, I would never describe myself necessarily as a military historian, even though I have dabbled, as you know. But he's more than dabbled. He's knee deep in it. But no, I don't think it's a dirty word. That's just, I just think it's my skill set. So I think I've written books about events and human experiences in societies at war.

but I wouldn't describe myself as a military historian. Nor were the critics. No. But where I think it works best, and you can see this in the best of Anthony Beaver's work, for example. Not all of it, because some of them haven't done that well and for various reasons, but the best of Beaver's work is where he can take you from one minute being in the slit trench in the rain up to your knees in mud and describe very effectively and affectingly what that feels like.

And then the next paragraph is sort of grand strategy and, you know, what was going on at command level and meld the two into a coherent whole where it all makes sense. And it's a tough job. It's a very difficult thing. I mean, it applies to, in a sense, general history writing and even fiction writing, slightly this way. It's story and argument. Yeah, but it's structure. You've got your sources and you've got a plethora and to select the right ones at the right time. A lot of you have mentioned...

and how that's important. Like the bigger the story, the more you need characters. You've got to be human, isn't it? You're based on the human spirit. And also be brave to cut yourself, you know, less is more. The larger a subject, I always think, the more you have to be kind of a pointillist in your approach, you know, and be very selective and take, you know, a couple of examples to illustrate the whole rather than doing page after page of essentially saying the same thing. You just need to cut a couple of examples out

use those. So it's about, you know, being selective but in the process giving an impression of the whole. Jess, your final selection. I want to give a shout out to Claire Mully's Agent Zoe, which I haven't yet read appallingly, but I

I heard her speak about it. And I know you, I think you've reviewed it, but I heard her speak about it. And she's very good at this. She's very good at writing biographies of female spies, female heroes, really, and bringing out these slightly forgotten stories. And again, she does her work. She can write. And this is Elisabetta. You're going to have to keep that. There we go.

I tried to pronounce that when I interviewed her, and she laughed me out of court. Even Zoe is presumably completely wrong. I just said I'm calling her Zoe from now on. It's like spot-po, it should be fa or something. Yeah, shoot, shoot. So big shout-out for her. But the one I've got here in front of me, it's called Rogue Agent. It's just come out. It's by James Crosland, and it's basically a new biography of Robert Bruce Lockhart, who we all know from the Lockhart plot of 1918 –

catastrophe in Russia. It ended up being a ridiculous attempt to assassinate Lenin and Trotsky. And he was really marred by it for the rest of his career and a bit of a laughingstock. But what Crosden does really well is to show what else he did. I mean, he ended up heading PWE, the Political Warfare Executive.

And having really an important role in propaganda. And it's very well written. It's an easy read. But it's also, again, one of those books that feels very contemporary right now. And I feel like propaganda, it's an aspect of war that perhaps we haven't paid enough attention to, but we absolutely need to now. And has this helped you with your next project? Yes.

With mine, yes. The reason I was like, oh, Lockhart. It's, yes, my grandparents who I'm spending ages and probably 10 years like Helen, but researching and they're in Russia at the same time and very much involved in counter-revolutionary plots and coups in Moscow and then propaganda in the Second World War. So it all chimes in quite nicely. Yeah.

And what's the theoretical publication there? Because we'll get on to everyone's next books in a second. What's the theoretical publication? I've had it in 2028, so I guess it'll be 2029. But it's a lot to cover. There's Russia, there's Ukraine, there's the Balkans, there's Constantinople as there was, there's refugees. It does sound fantastic. Richard, your last one. Well, my last pick, actually, one thing we've not

really covered is any fiction. So I thought I'd put a shout out to William Boyd's latest book, which is a great, fun, entertaining spy novel where it kind of covers the

the sort of early 60s and the Cold War then. What's the title? Well, the title on the cover are not the best. Gabriel's Moon, which you'll cringe at the title, you'll cringe at the cover, but once you open up the book, it's fantastic. I loved it. I mean, lots of people I know who have read a lot of spy fiction have basically put it as their book of the year. Yeah.

I mean, the sort of protagonist's girlfriend in it works in the wimpy. He had me at hello. It's just great fun. And, you know, William Boyd is sort of, you know, national treasure space. Yeah. And also kind of, you know, he's on his top of his game. I mean, he brought out the romantic last year. This is going to be a series happily where he's going to carry it on. It has kind of, you know, it's different to Graham Greene. It's different to John le Carre. But anyone who reads those people will also enjoy Gabriel's Moon. So put that in.

In your stocking, yes. And your own, what are you moving on to? Well, I've got a book out tomorrow on the Battle of Crecy. And I'll be spending a little bit of time in sort of medieval Europe. Yes. Roddy, your final selection. I'm going with Giles Milton, Starling Affair, which came out earlier this year. I mean, Giles writes beautifully. I mean, actually, he writes annoyingly well. You know, he kind of puts the rest of us to shame to some extent.

And it's a great subject, you know, it's the development and maintenance of interwar relations in World War II within the Grand Alliance through the lens of Kathy Harriman, who was Avril Harriman's daughter. She had this sort of tremendously gossipy kind of tone, you know, she was, I mean, tremendously intelligent, but she was...

in the room in all of those sort of, you know, big three meetings and, you know, was there to witness what they were drinking, what they were eating, what the soft furnishings were like and so on. And she wrote it all in her diaries and her letters and so on. And that's his prism in. And it actually works really well in terms of describing, I suppose, the everydayness to some extent of those relations and what they talked about and so on.

and their interactions. And he just does it. He does it beautifully. You know, it's sort of relatable. It's sort of, it's a rollicking story, hugely enjoyable. And as I said, you know, annoyingly well written. And Archie Clark Kerr. And Archie Clark, I mean, what a character. What a character Archie Clark Kerr is. You know, he's astonishing. He's sort of, I'd obviously known about him, but I didn't know the sort of the detail of him, you know, flamboyant,

bisexual you know complete english eccentric and that stalin even gifted him his former master like as almost as a manservant to take home after he finished and he ended up being oh yeah the end of the official shop in scotland well i mean lots of people end up at a master i've been scotches no the master ended up running i mean i would say i mean giles has got a great radar for stories yeah that's what they say he really does you know in terms of

you know, what he commits to. It's, it's a kind of, you know, and Archie Clark Kerr, of course, is the author of the famous, um, yes, uh, dear, dear Reggie letter. That is, which is in the, he always asks before he does a talk. He said, can I say, could I say it? Yeah. Uh, even when he's giving talks to school, uh,

yeah but it's a but again it's a if anyone out there if anyone in the world doesn't know it go and look it up look up dear reggie it's wonderful okay great stuff roger uh what are you up to next well my u-boat war book which is called wolf pack hitler's u-boat war is out in in the uk in october next year 2025 um so i've got um all the edits i'm knee-deep in the edits at the

Oh, trying. But, you know, it's great fun. It's been fabulous fun to write. Really, really enjoyable. And so much material that's new that sort of shows the sort of dark underbelly of the U-boat service and what it was like to spend, you know, two months on a U-boat on patrol in the Atlantic. The short answer is it was absolutely horrific.

So it's effectively Das Boot, the history book, for those that remember Das Boot. Lots of German sources and, you know, I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, actually. So Das Boot will be my next one coming out in October. Yeah, and then we will be talking about that next year, Roger, for sure. Because, I mean, we've known it, obviously, people in this room, particularly Richard and I, have known about this for quite a while. It went through a few different titles, didn't it? I seem to remember Running with the Wolves. Das Boot is on the other foot.

But you've actually come out with... Wolfpack. I think that's quite... Well, I said the Wolfpacks. Yes. Alas. But listeners, I want you to read this book and then write to Modern Morehouse and say what a great military story.

Yeah, exactly. It'll be hard not to call yourself. But yes, I mean, going back to the terminology, Anthony Bieber always says I'm a historian of war, not a military historian. By the way, this is a legacy of the kind of 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the States, where it was a bit of a pejorative term to be called a military historian. I've always thought it served me rather well personally. But then again, I've always written mainly straight stories.

with all the parameters. I think the key thing in that, I'm not viewing it sort of in the do or bar and saying that military history is beneath me at all. If anything, it's the other way. Because I don't feel like, yeah, I don't feel specialist. So you go for the human angle because it's easy, it's more accessible. And that's where my interest lies. I'm not really a military nerd, right? So in that sense, I don't necessarily...

to know even which battalion it was that was doing whatever it was, whereas a military nerd would, and they would have that in the text. They're not militarily exclusive, though. No, I know. Typically now. You know, that would be one of the main, you know, getting the battalions right and which regiment it was or which... I'm

I'm actually, to me, I'm almost deaf to that. As long as there's a decent diary or decent memoir about it, then that's what interests me. Yeah, but you have actually mentioned some of the U-boats, haven't you? You haven't said, well, this is just a U-boat floating in the Atlantic. Okay, so I think all listeners know my forthcoming book is Tunis Grab, which is the story of the Tunisia campaign. It's coming out very close to Rogers and it's the same publishing house.

And by the way, Jesse's also joined the same publishing house, William Collins. So it's our in-house, in-house publisher. Great time to be published next autumn, Roger. And I know I can let you on a little bit of a inside information. I got the, when we have ways that's the festival run by our sister podcast was asked for

potential subjects for talks at We Have Ways, which is next September. So it might just work for you in the sense you might just have copies by then. U-Boats was one of them, was one of the three or four big ones. There is this fascination and this interest and the grimness of anyone who's seen Das Boot, which is based on a real U-Boat commander, wasn't it? Yeah, it was the author about Lothar Gunther Buchheim.

was a Third Reich war reporter who went on two missions on U-96, was a Type 7, but in 41, 42, and then wrote about it for the press and so on. And then he was actually, by trade, was an art historian, funnily enough. And then later on, went back to art history and decided to write his experiences as a novel.

And that became Das Boot, which is basically one mission on U-96. Assassination just with U-boat submarines in general, fiction, non-fiction, there's just something about the psychology of being, you know, trapped. Yeah. Sensory deprivation. There's a hammer artery. Yes, it's true. I mean, this is just a direct success.

Although we have the great siege of Tunis, Grant. Yeah, there's a lovely cast, Ian, just very briefly. There's a lovely cast of characters. The first time the Americans come into the war with the Brits, obviously it's going to be a significant moment. It happens in North Africa. The Americans are saying we should go straight for the juggler. Let's go straight into northwest France. This happens in

late 1942, and it was absolutely the right decision, the so-called scatterization and gradual constricting and strangling of the Axis powers by, you know, getting ever closer to them, cutting off their trade and blasting their factories. That was the right policy. If,

If there's one hero of the story, who is it, either as a force or a person? I mean, I've actually rehabilitated some of the characters who've had a really tough time, like Monty, for example. I mean, he's so objectionable as a character. It's really hard to end any story or any book, even if you have him as a fictional character, and love him. Because as Anthony Beaver said to me when I interviewed him recently about the Battle of the Bulge,

obviously Monty goes on to play a role in that. He said, I think he was high-functioning Asperger's. I mean, this is a guy who really struggles to deal on a social level. But he is high-functioning. He's got incredible powers of concentration. And these are quite useful in the military. That's it.

Not empathetic, but brilliant at processing lots of information. Anyway, so moving on from this talk of Tuna's Grad to our final selection of Book of the Year, one of the books you've already mentioned, Jessie, or something anyone else. Can I pick up one more thing very quickly, just from sort of North Africa? And it's not going to trouble Gary Lineker's goalposts, I don't think, but it's this very nice little podcast called Blighty Thank God.

And it's a chap called Neil Chapman who has discovered his grandfather's diaries. He was RAF. He was in Havanir in 1943. And he's sort of taken extracts and then expanded the story into a little series. So it's about sort of things like the grizzly bizlies or gold running in North Africa. And it's just very lovely. And I came across it because his grandfather was in the search party for my grandfather's

airplane which went down in Tehran. And so just from a Google search, I sort of found him because of AI and transcribing every single interview now that you get in any podcast. But I just wanted to give a shout out there because if anyone's into the RAF or just sort of has been talking about human stories, it's

a very nice way in. And what date was he in North Africa? 1943. 1943, okay. He was also in Italy for a bit, I think. But yeah, it might be worth you checking out for your written emails now. It's gone through stage. I mean, I could, I suppose, add a few bits. Anyway, so what's your selection? My book of the year is, has to be, Helen Castor's The Eagle and the Heart about Richard II and Henry IV and I recommend it to

and sundry. And she is really, I think I said in a blurb, she is the writer's writer and the historian's historian. And I haven't heard a single word of, of dispraise, if that's even a word for her. She's, she really does command respect with this book and with all her books. Oh,

I mean, I would concur with that. I've gone on record. I mean, to add to that, the unofficial sequel is Dan Jones' Henry V, where, you know, Helen's book is a story of tragedy of two unfortunate kings for various reasons. But from that, Henry V mindfully learned some lessons from both of them. And at the end of Helen's book, there are green shoots of

And, you know, Dan Jones takes the story on. It's also the unofficial sequel to The Plantagenets, which is a great book. So, yes, by both. I'm going with Al Murray's Arnold. That's one that, as I said, I think it's beautifully done. It's very thorough on its own terms, in terms of the history. And that sort of, I really enjoyed that, as I said, the sort of philosophical challenge of...

in a sense, being lulled into not seeing this as predetermined and doomed. That, I thought, was a really interesting exercise in, to some extent, almost counterfactual history writing. But just to sort of take us out of that doom loop, I thought that was really interesting.

and so will we go without mario's own okay and i'm going to finish off uh not quite the deciding vote uh i'm going to go for the eagle and the heart as well it's a book that as i was reading it i just thought does it get any better than this the experience so particularly when you're a writer of history so you do feel you do feel quite conflicted because i do remember thinking you know some of these sentences are so beautifully constructed maybe i should spend a little bit more

I was putting together my own books. But at the same time, for history to make you feel that you're as close to the story, it's never going to replicate what really happened, of course, but it's close to it.

as possible it's it's unsurpassed and it's one of the great pieces of history i've read in the last 10 years so the eagle in the heart and therefore the eagle in the heart wins it as the battleground a book of the year but with an honorable mention for sure for al murray's arnhem black tuesday and also dan jones's henry the fifth thanks everyone that was great having you all on we'll do it again next year and we'll do it again at jesse's place i hope happy christmas yeah happy christmas everyone