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Soldiers
  • Published: 15 September 2002
  • ISBN: 9780712667388
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $32.99

Soldiers



Fascinating, in-depth study of the character and spirit of soldiers

What leads a man to join the Army? To fight and perhaps die for his country? To enjoy a semi-monastic life among his comrades? To belong to a regiment in which he can take pride? To obey orders? Or just to escape from poverty into a secure environment?
Rich in narrative and anecdote, this poignant and important book has at its heart short biographies of Chelsea pensioners whose lives span the twentieth century and who have seen action from Passchendaele to Anzio, from the Malayan emergency to the Mau Mau uprising, from Aden to Indonesia. Philip Ziegler is fascinated by the values which these veterans share, and which the Army inculcated in them: self-discipline, acceptance of risk and pain, patriotism, loyalty to their fellows. And, of course, sometimes bigotry, narrow-mindedness, even blinkered stupidity. Are the old values relevant today or is the Royal Hospital a museum of fossilised ideals and attitudes?
To read this book is to understand what soldiers are all about, what they fight for, and how they fit into the world of the twenty-first century.

  • Published: 15 September 2002
  • ISBN: 9780712667388
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Philip Ziegler

Philip Ziegler is one of Britain's finest biographers. His previous subjects have included Diana Cooper, Mountbatten, Edward VIII, Harold Wilson and Osbert Sitwell. He is a historian of the Black Death and has also written London at War, the history of the Blitz, and Soldiers, which was based on interviews with Chelsea Pensioners.
Philip Ziegler was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he gained first class honours in Jurisprudence. He then joined the Diplomatic Service and served in Vientiane, Paris, Pretoria and Bogota before resigning to join the publishers William Collins, where he was editorial director for over fifteen years.

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Praise for Soldiers

One of the most experienced and versatile biographers of his generation

Observer

The great virtue of this book is that with Ziegler's help, nice remarkable men who might otherwise have remained unchronicled, have written their dispatch and each has a gripping tale to tell

Evening Standard

Intensely moving, humbling, heartening - this is a handsome book

The Times