A War of Choice: Honour, Hubris and Sacrifice

A rollercoaster narrative of heroism, mismanagement and disaster... as gripping as any novel

Robert Irwin

Sound, vivid and enhanced by his modesty - there is no "as the bullets flew around my head" here. He simply describes in cool prose how Britain's share in the western allies' initial 2003 success in deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq tuned into a nightmare struggle against insurgency

Max Hastings, Sunday Times

The calamitous decision-making process that sent Britain into the "perfect storm" of fighting two wars on two fronts is brilliantly catalogued in Jack Fairweather's excellent book, A War of Choice

Sean Rayment, Daily Telegraph

An interesting and worthwhile book

Adrian Weale, Literary Review

It makes for one of the best histories of the aftermath of war, and a staggering story of the betrayal of everything it was fought for

Good Book Guide

It does what the Chilcot Inquiry should do, but probably won't

Robert Fox, Evening Standard, Books of the Year

A compelling history of the seamy realities of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it combines the vivideness of front-line reporting with detached and incisive analysis. A War of Choice should become the definitive account of this era

Alistair Horne

Fairweather deftly combines history, analysis and reportage to give a rational and dispassionate account of Britain's war... While A War of Choice is by no means the first book about the war in Iraq, nor even about Britain in Iraq, it is surely one of the finest. It is a compelling and sober exploration of Britain's controversial foreign policy in the Middle East, and, most importantly, it is fantastically readable.

Tom Begg, Sugar Street Review

We have needed to have a detailed and dispassionate book on Britain's bitterly controversial war in Iraq. At last we have it with this powerful, sweeping account.

Anthony Seldon

A compelling history of the seamy realities of war in both Iraq & Afghanistan, it combines the vividness of front-line reporting with detached and incisive analysis. A War of Choice should become a definitive account of this era, setting out the case against Tony Blair's shifty manipulations in Iraq more forcefully than any number of official enquiries will do.

Alistair Horne

Britain's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have spawned a new generation of war correspondents as brave and fluent as any that went before, many of whom go on to write books. Jack Fairweather, who reported from Baghdad for The Daily Telegraph, has compiled his own account, which is sound, vivid and [...] simply describes in cool prose how Britain's share in the western allies' initial 2003 success in deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq turned into a nightmare struggle against insurgency.

Max Hastings, The Sunday Times

Jack Fairweather, the accomplished correspondent of the Daily Telegraph for much of the Iraq venture, gives a brilliant summary of the British entanglement for the fourth time in that country in A War of Choice... It should provide an ideal introduction to the forthcoming, and much delayed, report about British involvement in Iraq by the Chilcot committee. That inquiry should finally lay bare who took the decisions for what, who knew what and at what time, and who should take responsibility. It won't do all that, we know already, because Sir John Chilcot himself has said he won't apportion blame. He should, and the fact he won't means we will have to rely on Jack Fairweather's pithy analysis for a long time ahead.

Robert Fox, Evening Standard

The calamitous decision-making process that sent Britain into the "perfect storm" of fighting two wars on two fronts is brilliantly catalogued in Jack Fairweather's excellent book A War of Choice. Through more than 300 interviews, Fairweather, a former Daily Telegraph correspondent in Iraq, expertly dissects the lies, spin and appalling decision-making which led to the biggest British foreign policy disaster since the Suez Crisis.

Sean Rayment, Daily Telegraph