Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev’s Russian ballet and Stravinsky’s music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.

    Following treatment for this he returned to the Western Front, remaining until the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918.

    The author waited nearly fifty years before writing it, and the perspective of history enhances its value. He writes only of the battles in which he participated (including the Somme and Passchendaele), though his comments on affairs beyond his knowledge at the time, through later study and reflection, are pungent and stimulating. Among other topics, he describes the politicians, the generals, Kitchener's Army, Hore-Belisha, German gas attacks, Picardy, dug-outs, tanks, the sex-life of the soldier, scrounging. trench kits and the censoring of letters. The author saw the First World War from below, as a fighting soldier in a line regiment. In the Second World War he served as a staff officer liaising between the Army and the RAF; serving two tours at RAF Bomber Command HQ at High Wycombe. This equipped him to draw forthright comparisons between the conduct of the two wars.

    Yet the Macedonian Campaign was, in Lord Hankey's words, 'the most controversial of all the so-called sideshows.' In his definitive The First World War (1999) Sir John Keegan hailed Alan Palmer for having written 'the best study of the Macedonian Front in English.' Palmer tells the story of this extraordinary polyglot army (it included, at various times, contingents from seven countries) from the first landing at Salonika in 1915 to the peace in 1918. He also illuminates the political and strategic background: the ceaseless argument in London and Paris over the army's future and the maze of Greek politics within which it and its commanders were enclosed. 'A masterly and colourful account of this, the most controversial and neglected sideshow of them all.' Guardian 'Not only a valuable contribution to history, but also an enthralling book' Sunday Times