Blood, Sweat and Arrogance

Gordon Corrigan's MUD, BLOOD AND POPPYCOCK overturned the myths that surround the First World War. Now he challenges our assumptions about the Second World War in this brilliant, caustic narrative that exposes just how close Britain came to losing.

He reveals how Winston Churchill bears a heavy responsibility for the state of the British forces in 1939, and how his interference in military operations caused a string of disasters. Gordon Corrigan investigates how the British, who had the biggest and best army in the world in 1918, managed to forget everything they had learned in just twenty years. The British invented the tank, but in 1940 it was the Germans who showed the world how to use them. After we avoided defeat, by the slimmest of margins, it was a very long haul to defeat Hitler's army, and one in which the Russians would ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

“Well worth reading”

This story has been told many times before but it gains substantially from this retelling of it - brilliantly described and lucidly explained. Corrigan also peppers his narrative with an engrossing array of military knowledge SPECTATOR
SUNDAY TIMES

The author was commissioned from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1962 and retired from the Brigade of Gurkhas in 1998. A member of the British Commission for Military History and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, he speaks fluent Nepali and is a keen horseman.

Previous titles:

Wellington (TPB Aug 06)

Blood, Sweat and Arrogance (HC July 06);

Mud, Blood and Poppycock;

The Battle of Loos;

Sepoys in the Trenches;

Look to Your Front

Why were the British, victorious in 1918, unable to match the Germans in 1940--and why were these pioneers of tank warfare overcome for so long by Germany's panzers? This caustic critique exposes just how close England came to losing World War II, and in the process overturns the reputations of some of Britain's most famous generals. Churchill takes heavy blame for the poor state of the British forces in 1939, while Montgomery is revealed to have much skill with a pen...but very little in command. It's a brilliant, eye-opening reassessment, from policy decisions in the 1920s to the great campaigns of 1939-45.

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