The Crimean War: The Untold Stories
By Alastair Massie
I’ve a thing for redcoats lately, based on the Peninsular War of the early nineteenth century. Well, here’s a book on them again, this time in another war and, strikingly, alongside the French!
It’s full title is “The National Army Museum Book Of The Crimean War” and it is a work of Alastair Massie, a curator of the museum, who successfully set up an exhibition on the subject in 2003.
Armed with ten years of experience in the job and access to an unprecendented amount of contemporary correspondance, he set himself the task of telling the story through the voices of those who were a part of the war.
This he successfully accomplishes, showing a rivalry and mutual dislike between officers, disclosed only by the letters they sent home, especially between a Captain Nolan and a seemingly foolish Lord Lucan. Others are far more touching that we ever see through the words of a narrator, such as one chap writing home to inform his father of his brother’s passing.
Other excerpts are written from the soldiers describing charges, how so-and-so took a musket ball in the throat, and so on.
The author accomplishes his job, but this book is not suited for someone like me. I think you would have to already have a knowledge of and interest in the Crimean War to be served by this. I don’t have that, so the book was hard for me, since I lacked in the most elementary details. I liken it to reading a book about wrestling: I’m already well familiar with the events, times, situations, and personalities, so a book in which the march through wrestling history is told through the voices of others would be great for me, but not so much for someone who is new to it, as they struggle to make sense of the events that are brought up and the names that are thrown around.
If you’re a fan of the Crimean War, I should think that this would be great fun. It didn’t work for me though 