Fatal Avenue
  • Published: 1 August 2008
  • ISBN: 9781844139385
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 608
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Fatal Avenue

A Traveller's History of the Battlefields of Northern France and Flanders 1346-1945

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A unique work, combining military history and travel, studying the most fought-over area on earth.

De Gaulle called it a 'fatal avenue' - that broad sweep of low-lying country stretching north-east of Paris. Over the centuries, invading armies have swept back and forth over this bloody terrain, and the names of battles fought here read like a dictionary of military history - from Agincourt, Calais and Crécy to Verdun, Vimy and Ypres.

Fatal Avenue is both a history and a guide - a unique study of a region that has witnessed more bitter military conflict than any other area of its size on earth.
  • Published: 1 August 2008
  • ISBN: 9781844139385
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 608
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Richard Holmes

Richard Holmes was educated at Cambridge, Northern Illinois and Reading University. He was a member of the Department of War Studies at RMA Sandhurst between 1969 and 1985, when he left to command 2nd Battalion The Wessex Regiment. He was appointed Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University in 1995. Professor Holmes has written over a dozen books on military topics, is general editor of Oxford University Press's Companion to Military History and he has written and presented several television programmes, including two six-part BBC TWO series, War Walks I and War Walks II, as well as a series on the Western Front which was televised in the summer of 1999.

portrait photo of Richard Holmes

Also by Richard Holmes

World War II The Definitive Visual Guide
Battlefields
The World at War
The Western Front
Riding The Retreat
In the Footsteps of Churchill
The Complete War Walks
See all

Praise for Fatal Avenue

A panoramic view of the military history of the battle-scarred landscape extending from Lorraine to Normandy

Sunday Times

Utterly fascinating. Its combined activities as uplifting route-map of courage and gloire and as sobering geo-history of human folly makes this a shaking, appalling, irresistible read

Observer

Enthralling information on everything from archery to fortification, and from strategy to ecology... It could scarcely be bettered

Ronald Blythe

Exceedingly well written... triumphantly succeeds... Richard Holmes is equally sure-footed when dealing with the human element, writing with equal conviction about Joan of Arc, Malborough, Napoleon, Haig, Foch, Ludendorff, Montgomery, Eisenhower, and many others. His book is an outstanding recruit to the shelves of military history

Martin Fagge
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