Hew Strachan is one of the world´s foremost experts on the Great War of 1914-18. His on-going three-volume history of the conflict, the first of which was published in 2001, is likely to become the standard academic reference work: Max Hastings called it ´one of the most impressive books of modern history in a generation´, while Richard Holmes hailed it as a ´towering achievement´.
Now, Hew Strachan brings his immense knowledge to a one-volume work aimed squarely at the general reader. The inspiration behind the major Channel 4 series of the same name, to which Hew was chief consultant, THE FIRST WORLD WAR is a significant addition to the literature on this subject, taking as it does a uniquely global view of what is often misconceived as a prolonged skirmish on the Western Front. Exploring such theatres as the Balkans, Africa and the Ottoman Empire, Strachan assesses Britain´s participation in the light of what became a struggle for the defence of liberalism, and show how the war shaped the ´short´ twentieth century that followed it.