100 books like Brothers in Arms

This book covers the drama and upheaval of the years leading up to the war to end all wars, and how five young British artist’s lives were changed utterly by their experiences, with all the energy of a great historical novel. All artists hope to find a powerful subject to drive their work, but this generation had to somehow express the madness and horror they found in those fields of Europe. A later generation would learn from these expressionists, futurists and vorticists and conjure international careers out of those lessons, but this very English group, during this century defining decade, did the heavy lifting.

Key paintings from Nash’s restless career, each with an accompanying essay offering insight into the real places and events that Nash samples and folds into his psychological landscapes. We are constantly aware of the mind behind the brush, using the places he loves to explore his inner anxieties and his desire for solace.

More than any other book, this volume of letters between friends, and the unguarded insight they allow, gave me a sense of the man, his rhythms of speech, his manner of expression and his character. Career details and everyday mundanities mix with deeper concerns and the kind of excavation of ideas only really close and respectful friends can express.

Nash never managed to finish his autobiography, and it was originally published with notes, letters and fragments edited into the second half to attempt to complete his story. This new edition adds his wife Margaret’s Memoirs of Paul Nash, 1913-1946, from a surviving type manuscript held at the Tate, to add many more colours and details to this fascinating portrait of an artist and his genius loci – sense of place. I’d also recommend James King’s biography Interior Landscapes.

My choice here could have been Douglas Newton’s superb Hell-Bent about Australia’s entry into the conflict, or various other fine books by renowned historians, but I can’t go past this one by an expert on Australia in WWI.

Peter Pedersen’s PhD on Monash as a commander became a fine book; his authoritative survey of the AIF during the war entitled The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front is another work of high quality; and he has also produced several studies of notable AIF battles. But my recommendation is a different publication — his extraordinary Western Front guidebook. Stay with me while I explain why.

Anzacs on the Western Front is lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs, and informed by his comprehensive detailed familiarity with what Australians did. It’s crucial for anyone visiting France and Belgium with the aim of pursuing particular engagements great or small, both to plan your… show more.

Published almost sixty years ago, this compelling study of four senior commanders who served (mostly) on the Western Front remains as fresh as when it was first written. Barnett’s prose is exquisite, bringing us directly into the world of Helmuth von Moltke, John Jellicoe, Philippé Pétain, and Erich Ludendorff, telling us how they coped (or not) with the enormous stresses and strains they encountered as ‘supreme commanders’. It is a stunning portrait of men (and their command systems) at war. 

This is the first novel I read about grieving families who commissioned photographers to search for the place where their loved one died, in order that a photo could be taken for them to have as a keepsake.

I love learning something new when I read a book and I discovered so much about the after-effects of losing someone without having knowledge of their last moments and a place to pay one’s respects. 

This is about Edie, a widow wanting answers about her husband who she believes might still be alive, despite being classed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ in 1917. She commissions her late husband’s brother to search for him and photograph his final resting place, if indeed there is one.

A wonderful, haunting story of enduring love and loss.

The late historian, Thomas Fleming, was a friend. It was an article he wrote for American Heritage magazine in 1968, “Two Argonnes,” about his father, a lieutenant in the 78th Division, that inspired me to write my first World War I book centered on my great uncle as the main character.

Thomas authored 19 books, The Illusion of Victory, is his last book, and he paints a different picture of America’s role in the war, showing how President Wilson and our country were “duped” by Great Britain and France to enter the war, thinking the war was almost won. He not only writes about the Western Front but goes into detail about the home front. After reading his book, you’ll get a different perspective on World War I.

In 2020, to honor one of our most imminent historians, Military History Quarterly magazine inaugurated the annual Thomas Fleming Award for… show more.

Parade’s End has been described by Mary Gordon as “the best fictional treatment of war in the history of the novel.” 

What made me truly connect with the story is its protagonist, Christopher Tietjens, who serves in the British Army during the “Great War.”

A member of a prominent, landowning family, Tietjens is driven by a strong sense of duty and commitment to marriage and country—whatever the cost to himself. Although he is in love with Valentine, he remains married to his promiscuous wife, Sylvia, and accepts as his son a child who may not be his.

But Tietjens’ experiences in the trenches on the Western Front eventually teach him that truth and happiness are more important than societal duties.

The most influential spy novelist of them all, John Buchan, had the Germans planning to disable the British army with anthrax germs. While an admittedly small part of all the various plots in the complex novel, Buchan’s Richard Hannay touched all the bases in the five books in which he starred. For another example, in 1924 The Three Hostages, international demigods stirred up trouble with brainwashing and hypnotism. This device was a popular weapon employed by the likes of Fu Manchu.