Why did Stephen love this book?
I once wrote a short book about the Queen, Elizabeth II, Queen of Laughs, a bestseller in French, so they now think I’m a royal expert and invite me on TV and radio to comment on any royal event. When the Queen died, I was in the French media nonstop for two weeks.
After this marathon, I got a phone call from
a lady: “I saw you on French TV; you’re the kind of speaker we like to invite
to our museum.” She explained that it was the former home of James Norman Hall.
I asked where it was.
“Tahiti.”
“Oh yes, I think I could find time to give a talk there.”
I’d never read any of Hall’s books, so I started at the beginning, and he was an eye-opener. Here was a young American who, in 1914, volunteered as a private in the British army and spent…
1 author picked Kitchener's Mob as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Kitchener's Mob is a classic English history text by James Norman Hall dealing with the life and times of Lord Kitchener. This brief narrative is by no means a complete record of life in a battalion of one of Lord Kitchener's first armies. It is, rather, a story in outline, a mere suggestion of that life as it is lived in the British lines along the western front. If those who read gain thereby a more intimate view of trench warfare, and of the men who are so gallantly and cheerfully laying down their lives for England, the purpose of…