The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling

Book Description

“Readable and reliable . . . [Gilmour’s] assessment of the political background of Kipling’s writings is exemplary.” —Earl L. Dachslager, Houston Chronicle

David Gilmour’s superbly nuanced biography of Rudyard Kipling, now available in paperback, is the first to show how the great writer’s life and work mirrored the trajectory of the British Empire, from its zenith to its final decades. His great poem “Recessional” celebrated Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and his last poems warned of the dangers of Nazism, while Kipling himself, an icon of the empire, was transformed from an apostle of success to a prophet of national decline. As Gilmour makes clear, Kipling’s mysterious and enduring works deeply influenced the way his readers saw both themselves and the British Empire, and they continue to challenge our own generation.

Customer Reviews:

Overlooked Today, But a Towering Figure in His Time.......2007-07-16

Rudyard Kipling, according to David Gilmour's authoritative 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling' was a first-class political hater and author of children's books, as well as the virtual embodiment of the British Empire. Kipling was considered the Imperial Laureate, although he would have refused the post had it existed as he did all government posts - not in his line at all.

Kipling lived much of the first half of his life in the Empire - he spent his early years in India, except for a horrid stretch when he was boarded back in England by his parents who stayed in British India, and later lived off-and-on in South Africa. Kipling loved the Empire and its civilizing mission (up to a point - he did not favor Christian religious proselytizing), but oddly was not that fond of England or the English.

Gilmour paints a portrait of Kipling as a thorough-going reactionary, a pessimist, a virulent opponent of women's suffrage, Irish Home Rule, nearly all politicians (he especially hated Liberals, but also accused Winston Churchill of `political whoring'), trade unions, and imperial wavering of any kind.

'The Long Recessional' (the title refers both to his poem written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and the decline of the Empire) is not so much a history of Kipling's literary works as it is his leading role in promoting the Empire through his literature. Readers seeking detailed literary analyses had best look elsewhere, but should read this book first to understand what it was that Kipling was so all-fired angry about most of the time. Kipling was something of a negative "prophet"; he saw the coming decline of the Empire and viewed as willful surrender, he saw the coming Great War and watched his countrymen fail to prepare or take a firm stand against 'the Hun', and he saw the coming Second World War and the repeated lack of preparation (he died before that war actually occurred).

Kipling suffered great personal unhappiness from the death of his first daughter at age 6, to a seemingly unhappy marriage with Kipling as the henpecked husband and the death of his son in one of those insane headlong infantry assaults on the German trenches at the Battle of Loos. Kipling's dour personality in most of his last quarter-century of life may to some extent be attributed to a misdiagnosed (and thus mistreated) duodenal ulcer that caused him great pain - once it was correctly diagnosed in 1933, Kipling's pain departed and his personality revived.

Kipling's writings were enormously influential in his time, probably to an extent difficult for the modern reader to grasp given over as we are to the visual and the aural. After the Boer War he turned his pen more and more toward political ends and a bitter-tipped pen it was. Today Kipling is more remembered for his children's classics such asThe Jungle Books (Signet Classics). His Plain Tales from the Hills explores India's impact on the British who lived there and in particular the soldiers who sometimes fought and died there.

Salmon Rushdie has summarized it best when he stated, "There will always be plenty in Kipling that I will find difficult to forgive; but there is also enough truth in these stories to make them impossible to ignore."

Gilmour brings Kipling back to life for some 300 pages; 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling' is a rewarding reading experience about a man mostly overlooked today, but of towering importance in his time.

could be much better.......2006-09-07

I've always enjoyed Kipling's poetry, and have long known that a close reading and an adequate understanding of his writings belie the less pleasant things that habitual hand-wringers and apostles of political correctness have to say about him. Hence my willingness to read this book.

This biography enumerates the stations of Kipling's life: he grew up in India, a country he never stopped loving, indeed it was Hindi and not English that was his mother tongue. After a childhood in India came boarding school in England, life as a journalist in India, becoming the unofficial poet laureate of the soldier and Empire, friendships with leading politicians, marriage to an American, and disillusionment with politics and politicians after the First World War, in which his son died in his first "battle." In this book Kipling does not come across as the ogre that some make him out to be, but he does come across as very close-minded, as a man who understood the art of poetry very well, but things such as the Irish and their grievances not at all.

All the same, I found this book to be a disappointment. Ideas were rarely fully developed; when poems are discussed, only short passages are quoted. Kipling's belief that war with the hated Germans was inevitable is uncritically seen as a sign of prophecy; perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy of his times and class would me more accurate. Nor are Ireland and Kipling's fire and brimstone solutions for Ireland's troubles described with any nuance. I don't think that the author more than scrapes the surface of the topics he described. Before I draw my conclusions on Kipling, I intend to read at least another book.

Unless you're a high-school student who has to write a report on Kipling, I wouldn't recommend this book to you.

Brilliant study of a brilliant man.......2002-07-12

Few have doubted Kipling's literary genius but for much of the 20th century progressive opinion has caricatured him as the bard of racism, the poet of savagery, the versifier of militarism. Gilmour focuses on Kipling's complex relationship with the British Empire, and shows that these caricatures do not do justice to the poet's nuanced views. To take only one example, Kipling was perfectly aware of the foibles of his fellow Anglo-Indians, and he often paid tribute to the nobility of ordinary Indians. But he was also aware that British rule over the Subcontinent was a great force for peace and stability. The Bloomsbury set jeered his views but he was proven tragically right after Indian independence, which resulted in a bloodbath. Let us hope that Kipling is not proven even more correct in the event of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.

Examines not only his writing, but his world.......2002-06-04

Rudyard Kipling was both a great writer and a representative figure of the British Empire, dabbling in both politics and exploration and winning the Nobel Prize in literature. This biography is the first to examine not only his writing, but his world: The Long Recessional considers the history of his times and provides a lively, revealing probe of the man's changes.

Imperialist and chauvinist - yes, misogynist - no.......2002-04-18

The fact that Gilmour explores Kipling's writing in terms of these themes and how they reflected aspects of his character is a clear indication that this book is no hagiography. The focus here is on the subject of empire and as the subtitle says it is all about: "The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling". Gilmour quotes Kipling as saying that empire was "the fabric of my mental and physical existence." Kipling seemed to see empire as some divine right of England:

GOD of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine
Lord god of Hosts be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
(Recessional)

Book Description

These tales have been collected from all places, and all sorts of people, from priests in the Chubara, from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun Singh the carpenter, nameless men on steamers and trains round the world, women spinning outside their cottages in the twilight, officers and gentlemen now dead and buried, and a few, but these are the very best, my father gave me. The greater part of them have been published in magazines and newspapers, to whose editors I am indebted; but some are new on this side of the water, and some have not seen the light before. The most remarkable stories are, of course, those which do not appear -- for obvious reasons.

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I would have thrown myself in also, but that she was not dead and called to me from the bottom of the well, and I was afraid and ran. And one came out of the crops saying that I had killed her and defiled the well, and they took me before an Englishman, white and terrible, living in a tent, and me he sent here. But there were no witnesses, and it is better to die than to starve. She, furthermore, could not see with her eyes, and was but a little child.'

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Difficult read
Exceptional
good start... fades in middle

Rudyard Kipling: A Life
Harry Ricketts
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0786708301

Amazon.com

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was not yet 25 when he burst onto the literary scene in London, where his stories of Anglo-Indian life made him an instant celebrity. He won the Nobel Prize in 1907, but by then his critical standing was already in decline, marred in part by popular poems like "The White Man's Burden," which stereotyped him as a tub-thumping jingoist, a reputation he cemented with the distasteful racism of his patriotic appeals during World War I. Poet Harry Ricketts rescues Kipling from cliché in perceptive critical exegeses that remind the reader just how fine a fiction writer he was, pointing out the nuanced appreciation of racial and cultural boundary crossing that informed such masterpieces as Kim. In this brisk narrative, Kipling emerges as a charming, genuinely warm man and a devoted, delightful father; it's no surprise that the children's books Just So Stories and The Jungle Book remain his most beloved works. Without scanting the nastiness of Kipling's reactionary politics, Ricketts suggests their source in personal sorrows that included his 18-year-old son's battlefield death in 1915 and the agonizing demise of his 6-year-old daughter, after which, said Kipling's sister, "he was a sadder and a harder man." --Wendy Smith

Book Description

This absorbing, widely praised biography brings a fresh and sympathetic eye to the career of the prolific writer whose popular Jungle Books and collections of poems like Barracks Room Ballads as well as the masterly novel Kim propelled him to the pinnacle of literary success before he was forty. With illuminative reinterpretations of his work, it also follows Kipling through the next three decades that took this complex, troubled, and brilliant man to tragic personal disappointments and galling disrepute among the lions of literary fashion. In all, biographer Ricketts brings vibrantly to life the diverse worlds of imperialist India and Victorian London that both inspired and betrayed Kipling’s genius.

Customer Reviews:

Difficult read.......2007-09-04

This was difficult to read because the author skips around in Kiplings life so It was difficult to follow the sequence of events. Kipling was such an interesting person, I am looking for his official biography written by Carrington.

Exceptional.......2001-11-17

Clearly the best Kipling biography in many years. Mr. Ricketts has a fine touch, especially for Kipling's early years. If his later life wasn't as exotic and interesting, that's Kipling's affair. I think the mainstream reviewers had it right ('Splendid,' said The Atlantic Monthly, 'irresistibly readable,' said The New Yorker). Insightful and engaging.

good start... fades in middle.......2000-05-12

Mr. Ricketts begins well. Kipling's ancestors are well drawn. His first years in India are well done. The years back in England when he was 7-17(roughly) are very well written. The first years as a journalist back in India, when Kipling had great success with poems and stories, is well doen too. So, the first 140 pages are useful. Then the book gets really boring. Kipling leaves India, circles the world and lives in Englamnd then the US. It's really boring. Mr Ricketts seemed to run out of energy. So read the first part and skip the last.

Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life (Literary Lives)

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Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life (Literary Lives)
Phillip Mallett
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Rudyard Kipling has been one of the most loved and the most loathed of English writers. Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life is a study of the forces and influences that shaped his work--including his unusual family background, his role as the laureate of Empire, and the deaths of two of his children--and of his complex relations with a literary world that first embraced and then rejected him, but could never ignore him.

Rudyard Kipling: Selected Works (Reissue)

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Rudyard Kipling: Selected Works (Reissue)
Rudyard Kipling
Manufacturer: Gramercy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

Witty, profound, wildly funny, acerbic and occasionally savage, Rudyard Kipling's poems continue to delight readers of all ages. Included are both the familiar favorites and Kipling's lesser-known works. This is the only complete collection of Kipling's poems available in paperback.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Wish House and Other Stories (Modern Library Classics)

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The Wish House and Other Stories (Modern Library Classics)
Rudyard Kipling
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907, has long been considered an important and vibrant, even controversial, storyteller and poet. The Wish House and Other Stories is a collection of Kipling’s finest works, including the stories “In the House of Suddhoo,” “The Disturber of Traffic,” and “The Eye of Allah,” the poems “The Runners,” “The Return of the Children,” and “The Last Ode,” and his famous story about Afghanistan, “The Man Who Would Be King.” Each piece was selected by poet and scholar Craig Raine, who writes in his Preface, “We need to think about Kipling. He is our greatest short-story writer, but one whose achievement is more complex and surprising than even his admirers recognize.”

Kipling biography.(Book Review): An article from: English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

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Kipling biography.(Book Review): An article from: English Literature in Transition 1880-1920
D.H. Stewart
Manufacturer: ELT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, published by ELT Press on January 1, 2005. The length of the article is 573 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Kipling biography.(Book Review)
Author: D.H. Stewart
Publication: English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2005
Publisher: ELT Press
Volume: 48 Issue: 1 Page: 252(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Rudyard Kipling (Life & Times)
Jad Adams
Manufacturer: Haus Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Rudyard Kipling, a character study: Life, writings and literary landmarks

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Rudyard Kipling, a character study: Life, writings and literary landmarks
Robert Thurston Hopkins
Manufacturer: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Book Description

This classic and inspiring account of the progress of the 7th Armoured Division from the sands of North Africa to the cold of wintery Holland and the mud of a German springtime. Based on official records, and written by one of the division's key officers, this book is an outstanding testament to the officers and men of an astonishing unit. The division's reputation was born in the desert. It first went into action against the Italians in 1940 and then, subsequently, fought Rommel's Afrika Korps in Montgomery's successful Western Desert campaign. It was during this period of intense fighting that the division won its affectionate nickname of Desert Rats. From there the division was transported to Italy and, later, Normandy and from then on was almost constantly in battle until the end of the war. The Desert Rats was written with official support, and with the help of most of the division's senior officers, and the author has been able to provide a unique insight into the workings of a formidable unit. The book stands testament to the unique morale of the division and is an enduring story of difficulties overcome. Major-General Verney served as a tank brigade commander in World War II and went on to command 7th Armoured Division in Normandy in 1944.

Desert Rats: British 8th Army in North Africa 1941-43 (Battle Orders)

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Follows Conventional British Historiography

Desert Rats: British 8th Army in North Africa 1941-43 (Battle Orders)
Tim Moreman
Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1846031443
Release Date: 2007-07-24

Book Description

Tim Moreman examines the creation and deployment of British 8th Army, probably the most famous military formation raised by the British during World War II. Formed in September 1941 from the Western Desert Force, it went on to wage a lengthy, hard-fought campaign against German and Italian troops across the deserts of North Africa. It was composed of British and Commonwealth troops - as well as smaller numbers of French and Polish troops. Additionally, a variety of specialized elite forces came under its umbrella including the Special Air Service, Popski's Private Army and the Long Range Desert Group. This book will provide a fascinating insight into these unconventional troops who became the inspiration for today's Special Forces. It was also the first Allied army to rely on close air support; a revolutionary, war-winning tactic that would shaped combined forces strategy throughout the rest of the war.

The Desert War was unlike any other fought by the British Army. The hot, dusty, and unforgiving climate and environment in which its troops lived, moved, and fought was almost as troublesome as the enemy. During its two-year period of service in North Africa, 8th Army underwent major changes in organization, equipment, and training to adapt it to the terrain. Discover the difficulties of desert warfare and how these were overcome by the 8th Army to defeat Rommel and become masters of the desert.

Customer Reviews:

Follows Conventional British Historiography .......2007-09-04

Tim Moreman's second volume in Osprey's Battle Order series, Desert Rats: the British 8th Army in North Africa 1941-43, is a fairly conventional look at that famous fighting force. While the author does a fairly good job packing a lot of data into a small space, he doesn't make much effort to get off the well-worth path created by a previous generation of British historians on the Desert War and readers may fail to see any unique value that justifies its purchase. At any rate, this is a nice companion volume to the earlier (and better done) volume on the Afrika Korps and many readers will probably regard them as a matched set.

After a short introduction describing the 8th Army's creation in September 1941 and its combat mission, the author moves into an 18-page section on unit organization. Although the author provides a large number of line and block charts on units from division down to battalion, he provides relatively little data on the number of personnel and weapons authorized. Furthermore, while he does provide 8th Army charts for November 1941, May 1942 and November 1942 (the last, on pp. 73, is mis-labeled as July 1942), he does not list constituent brigades in each division or important corps-level artillery and engineer units. Unlike other Osprey Battle Orders books, such as the one on the Afrika Korps, the author actually provides very little information on the core component units in the 8th Army. Some allied units, such as the Greek 1st Brigade which fought at El Alamein, are never mentioned and the Polish Carpathian Brigade gets only a nod. This failure to provide a detailed organizational study is the biggest weakness of this volume.

The author then provides a 14-page section on doctrine and training, noting the pernicious effects of faulty pre-war training on British tactical performance in the desert. This is a very well-written section and the closest that comes to a reflective look at what went right and what went wrong for the British in North Africa. Particularly interesting are the author's description of the British creation of maneuver training areas in Egypt and the lengthy period required to train replacements arriving from England. A short section follows on weapons, focusing on infantry equipment, tanks and artillery - useful for novices to this subject. A 7-page section on C3I is also a bit of an eye opener, in that British tactical communications in North Africa were apparently pretty awful and greatly hindered coordinated operations, although the author also uses German sources to point to a rigid British style of issuing overly-directive orders. The volume also has 9 maps (the Mediterranean theater of war; North Africa; Operation Crusader - 3 maps; the Battle of Gazala; the Battle of Alam Halfa; the Battle of the Mareth Line; the Battle of Wadi Akarit), a bibliography and a list of abbreviations used.

The 28-page section on combat operations, focusing on Crusader, Gazala, Alam Halfa, Mareth Line and Wadi Akarit is the heart of the volume. This section is interesting and well-written, but doesn't seem to tie it all together into a coherent theory of how 8th Army evolved from a fairly amateurish colonial-era army into a modernized, combined-arms force, as Niall J. Barr did in 2005 with Pendulum of War. Indeed, Barr's book is not even mentioned in the bibliography and the author doesn't say a word about the string of abortive British infantry brigade attacks prior to Alam Halfa. Indeed, much of the narrative in this volume is similar to the type of writing we saw 30 years ago in Purnell's History of the Second World War, without benefit of more recent research. For example, not once does the author detail the evolution of British artillery tactics, including the TOT mission and the corps-level "stonk," that greatly increased British firepower at El Alamein. British improvements in engineers - which would make a big difference on D-Day - are also over-looked. The conventional view - to look mostly at tanks, infantry and anti-tank guns - just doesn't do justice to the 8th Army. Readers may also detect two annoying biases on the part of the author: a tendency to treat the Germans as ten feet tall and a tendency to lionize Montgomery at the expense of all the previous commanders of 8th Army. The Germans made plenty of mistakes in the Desert War, but here the author tends to make them look nearly invincible. Also, Montgomery certainly made big contributions to the improvement of 8th Army, but this author seems to suggest that nothing prior to Monty mattered much, which is far from the truth and slanderous to Wavell and Auchinleck.

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Desert Rats at war
George Forty
Manufacturer: Chartwell Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

7TH ARMOURED DIVISION: The Desert Rats (Spearhead 14)

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7TH ARMOURED DIVISION: The Desert Rats (Spearhead 14)
George Forty
Manufacturer: Ian Allan Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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21ST PANZER DIVISION: Rommel's Afrika Korps Spearhead (Spearhead Series)

ASIN: 0711029881

Book Description

The new 'Spearhead' series is designed to look at the cutting edge of war, dealing with units capable of operating completely independently in the forefront of battle. Each volume in the series examines the chosen unit's origins and history, its organization and order of battle, its battle history theater by theatrer, its insignia and its markings. Also covered are biographies of the most important commanders of each unit. Each title ends with an assessment of unit effectiveness - as seen by the unit itself, by its opponents and the light of more recent historical research. The books also include a detailed reference section with a critical bibliography, a listing of relevant museums and web sites, information about reenactment groups and memorials.

The British 7th Armoured Division will be remembered best by its small red shoulder flash that depicted Jaculus Orientalis-the Greater Egyptian Jerboa. Hardy, highly mobile and most at home in the desert, the human Desert Rats proved masters of desert fighting- as have their modern day descendants, the 7th Armoured Brigade, now operating in Iraq. As part of O'Connor's Western Desert Force, the Desert Rats helped to destroy the Italian forces that had started the war in the Western Desert-the Italian Tenth Army being completely defeated at Beda Fomm 5-7 February 1941; then they fought toe-to-toe with Rommel's feared Deutsches Afrika Korps in a seesaw campaign that ended in May 1943 with the surrender of Axis forces in North Africa. Next they were involved in one of the major amphibious landings of the war in Europe as part of the US Fifth Army at Salerno, fighting on northwards through Italy, until withdrawn back to UK, to take part in the Second Front as a vital component of the spearhead of British forces in Normandy, landing at Arromanches on 7 June 1944. They had to learn new skills in the close French bocage countryside, so different to the limitless space of the desert. And they did so the hard way with heavy losses at Villers-Bocage. From then on the division was hardly ever out of action: advancing across Europe from Lisieux in France through Belgium where it relieved Ghent and, finally, on to northern Germany where it took the surrender of Hamburg. These tough troops were then honored by being chosen to go to Berlin to take part in the great Victory Parade of 1945.For all those interested in military history, the new 'Spearhead' series is an excellent account of each of the individual units. Written by acknowledged experts in the subject, each volume is a detailed account of the development and operational record of some of the most famous military units in history.

Around One Cactus: Owls, Bats and Leaping Rats (Sharing Nature With Children Book)

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Love Fredericks' books

Around One Cactus: Owls, Bats and Leaping Rats (Sharing Nature With Children Book)
Anthony D. Fredericks
Manufacturer: Dawn Publications (CA)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1584690526

Book Description

Have you seen a saguaro cactus? It looks lonely, standing in the dry, dry desert. But actually the saguaro is a haven for a whole community of creatures - some cute, some creepy, all of them fascinating! The renowned educator-author uses an entertaining, repetitive rhyme that culminates in successful learning. Includes "field notes" and resources.

Customer Reviews:

Love Fredericks' books.......2006-01-15

Got 3 of this author's childrens' books. This is another great one that builds on the rhymes and repeats them. Beautifully illustrated.

The Desert Rat: The Remarkable Story of Aileen Coleman

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The Book You Won't Be Able to Put Down

The Desert Rat: The Remarkable Story of Aileen Coleman
Annette Adams
Manufacturer: Huntington House Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Religious | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1563841932

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The Book You Won't Be Able to Put Down.......2006-01-12

This book is extraordinary! Two American women travel to Jordan
and become close friends with the Bedouin desert people, who
are slow to trust anyone. They start a hospital and achieve many
miracles because of God's help.

The writing is extremely well done and the author tells excellent
stories about the Bedouins. If you are interested in working
with people overseas who need help, this book is essential to
read. I found it to be one of the best books that I have ever
read. Don't miss reading this book.

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Desert Night Shift: A Pack Rat Story
Conrad J. Storad
Manufacturer: RGU Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Action & Adventure | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 189179521X

The Shield and the Sabre: The Desert Rats in the Gulf 1990-01

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The Shield and the Sabre: The Desert Rats in the Gulf 1990-01
Nigel Pearce
Manufacturer: Stationery Office Books (TSO)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0117016373

Churchill's Desert Rats: From Normandy to Berlin With the 7th Armoured Division

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Churchill's Desert Rats: From Normandy to Berlin With the 7th Armoured Division
Patrick Delaforce
Manufacturer: Sutton Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

'No division has contributed more to the downfall of the Axis Powers and to the total defeat of Germany. The Desert Rats saw service in the Middle East when Italy declared war on Britian in 1940. They fought with great distinction all through the long campaign which culminated in the victory of Alamein. They took a leading part in the pursuit of Rommel's defeated forces and in the final breakthrough to Tunis. The division was the first British Armoured Division to land in Europe when it took part in the assault landing at Salerno. It served through the Italian campaign till brought back to England early in 1944 to prepare the great assault on Western Europe.' So wrote the GOC of the Desert Rats, Major General L.O. Lyne, in Berlin during the Allied victory parades. The Desert Rats, the 7th Armoured Division, wore its famous insignia of the jerboa, the long-tailed rodent, with pride. The 7th, the most famous British formation of the Second World War, was Winston Churchill's favorite. Patrick Delaforce presents numerous first-hand accounts of the terrible struggle in Normandy including Operations 'Goodwood' and 'Bluecoat' and of the break-out and great 'Swan' to liberate all northern France and Belgium. He describes the taking of Ghent, and the long months of fighting in the Peel country in the Netherlands; Operation 'Blackcock', the crossing of the Rhine and the advance through Germany; the capture of Hamburg, and the Allies' final triumphant entry into Berlin.

Desert Rats: The British 4 and 7 Armoured Brigades, Wwii to Today (Power Series)

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Desert Rats: The British 4 and 7 Armoured Brigades, Wwii to Today (Power Series)
Hans Halberstadt
Manufacturer: Motorbooks Intl
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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