Why read Bloody Victory?

Book cover of Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century

Book description

1 July 1916: the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The hot, hellish day in the fields of northern France that has dominated our perception of the First World War for just shy of a century. The shameful waste; the pointlessness of young lives lost for the sake…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Bloody Victory as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Spencer Jones

Author

The Battle of the Somme 1916 was the longest and bloodiest battle ever fought by the British Army. In popular imagination, the battle tends to focus on its first day – 1st July 1916 – when British forces suffered almost 60,000 casualties. Yet the battle was much more than this single, dreadful day and the fighting would rage for another 140 days. What happened? This meticulously researched book tells the full story of the Somme campaign and shows how it was planned and fought. It is immense in scope, taking the reader from the corridors of high politics to…

From Spencer's list on The best books on the British Army in World War I.