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The Somme

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The Somme

By: Peter Hart
Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith
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About this listen

On 1 July 1916, Douglas Haig's army launched the "Big Push" that was supposed finally to bring an end to the stalemate on the Western Front. What happened next was a human catastrophe: scrambling over the top into the face of the German machine guns and artillery fire, 19,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed, the greatest loss in a single day ever sustained by the British Army. The battle did not stop there, however. It dragged on for another four months, leaving the battlefield strewn with the bodies of over a million men, and all for the sake of just a few miles of land.

The Somme has remained a byword for the futility of war ever since. In this major new history of the war, Peter Hart describes how the battle looked from the point of view of those who fought it. Using never-heard-before interviews taken from the Imperial War Museum oral archives this will be a unique audio full of passion, joy, and heart rending stories.

©2005 Peter Hart, Nigel Steel (P)2005 Orion Publishing Group Ltd. Military War British Army

Critic Reviews

"[Hart] has produced a remarkably even-handed account....and the first-person accounts he has unearthed are rich in vivid images." ( Sunday Times)

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Excellent

Brilliantly researched and well balanced account of this ghastly period of history. Well read and very easy to listen to.


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Harrowing Story, Told Compellingly

Great listen. The storyline was expertly told by the narrator, and the accounts retold by the survivors were placed exactly where they were most useful, and therefore added greatly to the performance and delivery of the narration. The Somme is a sad tragedy, but all the more we should know about it and understand why it happened and learn about the people involved. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to get more involved in WWI history.

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