A Splendid Little War

The war to end all wars, people said in 1918. Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting Bolshevik Reds for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Secretary of State for War) wanted to see Communism 'strangled in its cradle'. So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, went there to duff up the Reds. 'There's a splendid little war going on,' a British staff officer told them. 'You'll like it.' Looked like fun. But the war was neither splendid nor little. It was big and it was brutal, a grim conflict of attrition, marked by incompetence and corruption. Before it ended, the squadron wished that both sides would lose. If that was a joke, nobody was laughing.

About the author

Derek Robinson, the son of a policeman, read history at Cambridge before working in advertising in London and New York. His novel Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1971.

Summary

Merlin Squadron volunteers for action in the the Russian Civil War. 'The ace of airborne fiction' returns with another winner.

Report

'Brilliantly combines readability [and] pitch-black humour ... A bitterly funny evocation of the lunacies of war' Nick Rennison, BBC History. BBC History

Product details

• Authors: Derek Robinson
• Publisher: Quercus Publishing
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 03.04.2014
• EAN: 9781780878096
• ISBN: 978-1-78087-809-6
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 123 mm x 212 mm x 18 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / War & Military, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Literary, War & combat fiction, War, combat and military adventure fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary