The Somme, Peter Hart
The Somme, Peter Hart
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The Somme

Author: Peter Hart, Nigel Steel

Narrator: Tim Pigott-Smith

Abridged: 6 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/15/2006

Synopsis

On 1 July 1916, Dauglas Haig's army launched the 'Big Push' that was supposed finally to bring the end to the stalemate on the Western Front. What happened next was a human catastrophe: scrambling over the top into the face of the German machine guns and artillery fire, almost 20,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed that day alone, and twice as many wounded - the greatest loss in a single day ever sustained by the British Army. The battle did not stop there, however. It dragged on for another 4 months, leaving the battlefield strewn with literally hundreds of thousands of bodies.

The Somme has remained a byword for the futility of war ever since. In this major new history, Peter Hart describes how the battle looked from the point of view of those who fought it. Using never-before-seen eyewitness testimonies, he shows us this epic conflict from all angles. We see what it was like for those who stayed behind in the trenches - the padres, the artillerymen, the doctors. We also see what the battle looked like from the air, as the RFC battled to keep control of the skies above the battlefield.

Read by Tim Pigott-Smith

(p) 2005 Orion Publishing Group

About Peter Hart

Peter Hart was born in 1955. He went to Liverpool University before joining the Sound Archive at the Imperial War Museum in 1981. He is now Oral Historian at the Archive. He is the author of several highly acclaimed works on the First World War.

About Nigel Steel

Nigel Steel is head of the Imperial War Museum's Research and Information Department. He and Peter Hart have collaborated on several titles, including works on Gallipoli, Passchendaele and the First World War in the air.

About Tim Pigott-Smith

Tim Pigott-Smith is perhaps best known for his role in The Jewel in the Crown, but he is an actor of wide range and experience on film, television and the stage. TV work includes North and South and Innocents. Films include The Remains of the Day, Bloody Sunday and Gangs of New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Anthony on June 23, 2023

Britain’s Attempt on the Western Front. By 1916 the First World War had been raging across Europe for 18 months, with unimaginable death, destruction and suffering. It had gone much longer than the old ‘it’ll be over before Christmas’ trope. Many like Earl Kitchener foresaw a long war, dragging out a......more

Goodreads review by Dennis on January 25, 2025

When I was a US Army commissioned officer, we discussed epochs of war technology and the accompanying strategies. That the Civil War and how it was strategized was different than WWI and WWI was different than WWII, etc. WWI was truly a meat grinder, stalemate war, thus the accompanying trenches, un......more

Goodreads review by Bruce on July 17, 2014

I am sort of stunned to see that this history of the fighting on The Somme in WW1 only has a rating of 3.78! For my mind this book cannot be rated highly enough... Before reading Hart's book on the history of The Somme my knowledge of the fighting that took place on the Western Front was at best as m......more

Goodreads review by Arthur on December 09, 2022

At 20 hours this book covered many intricacies. Getting into detail. As an audiobook it had the usual issue where there were no maps to look at, which I'm sure the print book had. So it's rough to keep pace with what was happening where, even if chronologically presented. The strength of this book w......more

Goodreads review by Paul on July 13, 2009

This is certainly not a pleasant read but one that adds an entire dimension to what human beings can accept. Although not the best book for a general description of the battle, the fact that it is nearly half first-person accounts lends a personal human dimension to a battle where the overall human......more

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