Trial by Battle, David Piper
Trial by Battle, David Piper
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Trial by Battle
Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics

Author: David Piper

Narrator: Richard Burnip

Unabridged: 7 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Headline

Published: 10/24/2019

Synopsis

October 1941. Twenty-one-year-old Alan Mart is posted to India and taken under the wing of the dogmatic, overbearing Acting-Captain Sam Holl. Following the Japanese advance on Singapore, the men are deployed to Malaya. What follows is a quietly shattering and searingly authentic depiction of the claustrophobia of jungle warfare and the indiscriminate nature of conflict.

Based on David Piper's own wartime experience in South East Asia, this new edition of a 1959 classic includes a contextual introduction from IWM which sheds new light on the dramatic true events that so influenced its author.

(P)2019 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

About David Piper

David Piper (1918 1990) was best known as an art historian and museum director. He served with the Indian Army during the Second World War, and was a Japanese prisoner of war for three years from 1942 1945. Piper based Trial by Battle on his wartime experiences, publishing it under the pseudonym Peter Towry in 1959. In later life he achieved widespread acclaim as the director of the National Portrait Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Ashmolean Museum.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nooilforpacifists on March 08, 2015

Well written, painfully told tale of a British Sub-Lieutenant posted first to India then, when the Japanese advance on Singapore, to Malaya. Another "fall of the Raj/End of Empire" metaphor that's halfway between Robert Henriquez's "The Commander" (though that out-of-print book takes place entirely......more

Goodreads review by Chris on July 27, 2021

"Alan blundered on until he realised that Holl was not listening. He stopped. Holl was turned slightly from him, his legs apart, but lurched askew, with his head pressed on to one shoulder, his mouth open, a blotch on the pallor that was his face. Horrified, Alan clasped his hands. Holl was jerking......more

Goodreads review by David on September 29, 2019

Alan Mart is a bookish, completely unmiitary young man who, fresh from Cadet College, is posted as a Second Lieutenant to an Indian Army Battalion in the autumn of 1941. The Japanese army is on the move, but are still believed to be just swarms of little yellow men who will melt away when faced with......more

Goodreads review by Lel on September 10, 2019

This tells the tale of Second Lieutenant Alan Mart, only 21 and posted to India, and the loud, overbearing Lieutenant, Acting Captain Sam Holl. Alan is being put through training and Holl believes War makes a man, but Mart is not exactly the warrior type. Holl is a hard drinking, loutish man who cont......more

Goodreads review by Ian on October 13, 2019

Young subaltern Alan Mart is posted to an Indian army regiment in 1941. In India the war seems a long way away, but then the Japanese invade Malaya and the regiment is moved East into a fight for which it is neither trained nor properly equipped. Based on the author's own wartime experiences, there'......more

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