Fans pick 100 books like Tommy

At first glance, this volume may seem out of place in a list of books about the British Army. However, Christopher Duffy’s work is one of the most interesting studies of the British Army on the Somme to have emerged in recent years. By using German sources, particularly interrogation reports from captured British, Canadian and Australian soldiers, he paints a unique picture of the British Army as viewed through the eyes of its chief opponent. The result is an unusual, illuminating, and delightfully readable study.

This is the kind of book that I wish I had written. In a series of individual essays, Brian Bond considers a variety of memoirs written by British participants of the Great War, detailing the author’s life and assessing the themes of their work. Some of the memoirs are familiar, such as Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, whereas others are long forgotten. The result is a fascinating book that reveals the sheer diversity of wartime experience and how the authors struggled to cope with it.

What enabled soldiers to maintain their morale in the inferno of the Western Front? This unique book explores the question by studying the soldiers of the elite 2nd Scottish Rifles at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915. It presents a fascinating micro-history of how a British battalion functioned in peace and in war. What type of men served in an elite unit? Where had they come from? What rules did they follow? Where did their loyalties lie? How did they maintain their spirit in the face of dreadful conditions and severe casualties? This book answers these questions and many more.

The Battle of the Somme 1916 was the longest and bloodiest battle ever fought by the British Army. In popular imagination, the battle tends to focus on its first day – 1st July 1916 – when British forces suffered almost 60,000 casualties. Yet the battle was much more than this single, dreadful day and the fighting would rage for another 140 days. What happened? This meticulously researched book tells the full story of the Somme campaign and shows how it was planned and fought. It is immense in scope, taking the reader from the corridors of high politics to the smoldering shell holes of no-man’s land. Ultimately, it reaches provocative conclusions that may change your thinking about the battle.

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.

This is the one First World War novel in which the characters actually talk like soldiers – i.e., they swear. It therefore provides a powerful counterpunch to our usual notion of what the trenches sounded like.

The scalding language survived intact due to the book’s complicated publication history. Initial release in an anonymous volume available only for subscribers meant that Manning, an Australian who had served on the Somme, could sidestep the mores of his time.

The result was lines like this: "“Fuckin' slave drivers, that's what they are!” said Minton, flinging himself on the ground.  “What's the cunt want to come down ‘ere buggerin’ us about for, ‘aven't we done enough bloody work in th’ week?”” A bowdlerised version – “Her Privates We” – later followed, but the unexpurgated original is the one to read.

Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and T.E. Lawrence all praised Manning’s work.

An excellent narrative of the experiences of a Canadian infantry officer who served in France and Belgium from Sept. 1915 to April 1917. There is a lot of emphasis on the sniping weapons utilized by the Allied forces during the early part of the war.

This is one of the most intense and gripping dark romances I've ever read. The story follows Caleb, a damaged man seeking revenge, and Livvie, the innocent girl he kidnaps. From the start, I was pulled into their twisted, complicated dynamic. It’s dark, raw, and pushes boundaries, but I couldn’t stop reading. Caleb is a character you both hate and feel for, while Livvie’s journey from fear to something more complex kept me glued to the pages. 

He’s the morally greyest character, and I hated to love him, but that’s what made him unforgettable. This book will definitely leave a mark. Caleb will always be one of my favorite anti-heroes, making this an unforgettable dark romance that still stands as the best I’ve ever read.

In the interests of full disclosure, I knew Campbell at university so my judgment on this novel of the Afghan war cannot be fully impartial.

I found it powerful though. There are obvious overlays between the experience of Campbell himself and his central protagonist Tom Chamberlain – both serve in high-period Afghanistan as officers with cavalry units. (Campbell was in the Blues and Royals). That overlap grants the novel its authenticity – from its dissection of 'ally,’ British army slang for cool, to “rock star” bomb disposal officers capable of “squaring up to colonels” and coffins of blast victims reduced to a few scraps of ruined flesh subsequently weighed down with sandbags.

Campbell’s next novel, The Fires of Gallipoli, set in the First World War, will be out next year.  

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.