Silent Landscape: Battlefields of the Western Front One Hundred Years On: The Battlefields of the Western Front One Hundred Years on - Rilegato

Doughty, Simon

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1911096036 ISBN 13: 9781911096030

Casa editrice: Helion & Co Ltd, 2016

Riassunto

This is an illustrated book about the landscape of the Western Front where the First World War was fought, relentlessly, for over four years across a narrow ribbon of ground stretching some 440 miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border. All the destructive power then known to man was used here, with success and failure measured in yards rather than human cost. The character of the landscape was soon lost once the battles started in earnest, stripped bare of vegetation and topsoil, churned beyond recognition, with irrigation systems destroyed, woods and forests erased, high explosive shells and other man-made remnants of war littering the ground, and the remains of many thousands of soldiers laying on the battlefields. Towns and villages were rebuilt, concealing all trace of war for the next generation. But in the countryside there remained indelible scars. This landscape has gradually recovered thanks mostly to nature and regeneration, while that other enduring legacy of the war, the cemeteries, memorials, preserved trenches and battlefields, carefully tended as gardens and parkland, now provide an ordered sense of humanity. These places have become part of the landscape as if they had always been there, as indeed they now always will. The authors have explored the length of the Western Front, not just those places that resonate in Britain, but to less familiar stretches of the front-line where both allies and enemies faced each other, in low swamps, rolling hills, and rocky mountainsides. It has been something of a journey, since there were many fierce battles in places that are rarely if ever mentioned in British accounts of the war. Equally revealing is that most of these hidden parts of the Western Front are all well within a day’s drive of the Channel ports. This book captures some of the haunting and evocative images of the Western Front landscape as it is now, using present-day photography. It focuses on the physical sweep of a place irrevocably changed by events that took place 100 years’ ago.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

An outstanding operational and tactical analysis of the German efforts outside of Budapest and the Soviets determination to thwart them. A detailed map section helps to visualize the operations....This is a book for the reader with an eye for operational and tactical detail. Helion continues to provide outstanding quality in it book production. --Strategy & Tactics

Being a battlefield photographer myself I am always fascinated to see how other photographers view the world I take images in. This book is a real treat for that, with so many great photos, and not just from the Somme and Flanders, but the Vosges, Main de Massiges and some really stunning images of the Phantoms Memorial in the Marne. It is easy to get lost in a book like this, and the accompanying text is far from just dressing, it adds contexts to the photographs and makes this book one of the recent highlights of WW1 Centenary publishing. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys seeing images of the battlefields and those who wish to improve their own photographs. --Paul Reed WWI blog & website

The photography is of excellent quality and accompanied by thoughtful and apt paragraphs of text. --The Foreign Correspondent

L'autore:

The writer: Simon Doughty served in The Life Guards, retiring from the Army in 2009. He is a graduate of War Studies from Kings College, London and a tour guide who worked closely with the late Professor Richard Holmes. He contributed a chapter to Excellence in Action: A Portrait of the Guards, published in 2008, and also writes for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is currently the editor of The Guards Magazine. The photographer: James Kerr, a former soldier who spent eight years in the Coldstream Guards, is able to read the battlefield with a practiced eye. A commercial and landscape photographer for over twenty years, previous published work includes Shakespeare s Scenery , a with foreword by Dame Judi Dench. www.jameskerr.co.uk

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Helion & Co Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1911096036
• ISBN 13: 9781911096030
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 208