Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for a new WWI book to read and wanted to ask if Lyn MacDonald's books were worth buying. I am more interested in the experience of the foot soldiers first and overall strategy second.

Thanks!


Regards,

Wes

MacDonald's books are top class.
Suggest Peter Liddle's '1914-18 The Soldier's War' for a good read about the experiences of the troops in all theatres.
MY humble opinion!!

They provide a good introduction to WW1 for any reader. They certainly concentrate on the personal experience and will provide some outline of general strategy but will not give you much in the way of the broader picture of the war and detailed battle strategies.

They remain, for me anyway, a good starting point to build up an interest.

Hi Wes

If your looking for the experiences of the foot soldiers, then Lyn MacDonald's books are well worth reading.

Annette

Her earlier books are better than the later ones IMHO.

Lyn MacDonald has/had a very good team of researchers and the books are well worth it for an intro to WW1.

Aye
Malcolm

I agree with the other comments. I have her books on 1914, 1915, the Somme, Passchendaele, and the Spring 1918 German offensive, and thoroughly enjoyed each of them.

I have a kind regard for 1914. it was one of the first books i read. But all of them have something to offer.

As said starters rather than perhaps analytical works but important nonetheless.

regards
Arm.

IMHO her "Roses of No Mans' Land" is her best but they are all well worth reading.

Sorry to disagree, but I think she is quite formulaic. Read 10 pages of any one book and you've read everything she has ever written. Also quite a few factual mistakes. I think we should have a page on this site called 'Aunty Lyn's Biggest Bloopers' wherein we systematically correct some of her grossest errors.

Having said that I wish I was £10 behind her. She's living proof that you don't have to be a good historian to make a mint out of WW1.

Ok Hedley, you start the ball rolling...............................

I agree with Hedley- I think her books are formulaic, and I think there are much better ones about! Having said that I have got them all, and I did enjoy Roses of No Mans Land. However, in, for example, 1915- her coverage of Loos is quite poor- not comprehensive in the slightest (no mention of the KOYLI!)- and same goes with her book on the Somme.... Back to the original post however, I'd recomend Middlebrooks two WW1 books any day for a good introduction of your average soldiers experience, and even Dennis Winters Deaths Men is good from that point of view...
Regards
Richard

Tend to agree with Hedley , formulaic is the word - perhaps that's why I posted previously that her earlier books were better with familiarity taking the edge of the experience . "1915" is a not very good at all IMHO. I suppose it was very tempting to make the most of her interview recordings and notes and fill in all those years and make a decent lump of cash.

Wes was interested in the experience of the foot soldiers first and foremost.

Lyn MacDonald's books allow us an opportunity to read the experiences of our veterans. Surely their story is more important than any perceived factual mistake that Lyn has made?

I agree with IanW that "1915" was not very good. It lacked depth BUT I did read quotes in it from veterans that I would never have read otherwise.

For a good introduction to the experiences of the PBI I would thoroughly recommend "Vimy" by Pierre Berton.

Here is a short list from Canada that I can recommend:

When Your Numbers Up - The Canadian Soldier in the First World War
Desmond Morton, Random House of Canada (1993)
- details training and life of a typical Canadian soldier on the Western Front

The Journal of Private Fraser - Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1918
CEF Books, Edited by Reginald Roy, (1998)
- excellent, observant, personal journal on one man's direct experiences

Passchendaele - The Sacrificial Ground
Nigel Steel and Peter Hart, Cassel Military Paperbacks (2000)
- an extended series of personal accounts of the true horror of this battle

Wes,

yu can see a review of They Called it Passchendaele that I wrote a while ago, here: review at www.1jma.dk forum

As you can tell from some of the previous posts, MacDonald certainly provides an excellent focus on the experiences of the front line soldier; if that is what you are after I can fully recommend any of them. Some are better structured than others, but the strength of the soldiers perspectives makes them all worth reading.

Given the focus on contemporary accounts and interviews with veterans, there isn't a huge amount of tactical or strategic detail, so if you were interested in that you would be better served by reading John Keegan's The First World War, or a similar 'traditional' military history.

Cheers,

Ste

I agree with Ste and Derek views on Lyn MacDonald's books but also agree with Richard's that they are not comprehensive, the Shropshires get very poor coverage in any of her book's. Also there is poor coverage of the 20th Division's capture of Langemarck on 16-8-17 or their capture of Eagle Trench in September. But then to give comprehensive coverage of any battle would take several volunms.

My view is still that they are worth reading, as they are full of info. from the men who were there. If you want comprehensive coverage then get the full set of OH

Annette

OK, Derek, here's a game you can play in the privacy of your home when you've really got nothing better else to do. I call it 'De-badging Lyn'.

NB : Technical note: 'De-badging' is a device used by multi-national companies to benchmark their products. What they do is to take one of their products (say a 1.6 litre car) and a range of similar products made by competitors, remove all the badges and trademarks - anything which links them to the individual maker. Then ask a panel of consumers if they can tell the difference between the de-badged products. Usually they cannot.

So ask a loved one and ask her to photocopy a few pages chosen at random from a selection of books from the LM collection, and tippex out any reference to individuals, units, dates and places. Then you have to identify the book from which they came. You won't be able to.

She does to WW1 writing what Scott Joplin did for jazz. Hear five bars and you've heard the lot.

There must be many, many people who use this Forum, and many more who don't, whose first experience of books about the Great War were Lyn Macdonald's, and who thoroughly enjoyed them, and therefore went on to pursue their interest at a deeper level. The books are lucid and have a strong narrative feel which holds attention. Her engagement with her subjects (as humans) is evident.

Wes says he's a beginner. I think he'd find Ms Macdonald's books worthwhile.

Gwyn

The book represent a good and extensive presentation of interview based material. As such they are a good accessible source of material.

There are downsides, however.

The narrative is written around the material that was available so if you are looking for material relating to a particular unit you will only find the unit covered if veterans from that unit were interviewed.

I also suspect that not all interviewers were skilled in that art. As a result some material may lean more towards "what the veteran thought the interviewer wanted to hear". Imagine the conversation:

"Were you in the battle of the Somme"

"Oh yes"

What was it like? etc. etc.

One eminent historian commented that a particular soldiers reminiscences of the Somme were particularly interesting given that the man demonstrably did not go overseas until 1917.

The gaps are there if you look, but the volumes do provide a good variety of veteran based material and as such are worthwhile and a good starting place if taken with a health warning.

Oh heck!

I now find myself defending Lyn Macdonald. White Knight Lonergan to the rescue.

Whilst i am willing to admit that from a discussion and analytical point of view, they are greatly lacking, I do feel that the books or certainly 1914, Somme, 1917, did give me some grounding in the basics of what happened and what the men went through.

They served to get me an interest established and whilst i do not read them much now i do have a fondness for these books that will not go away.

For anyone to criticise them they must have read them and as such gained something from them, even if this was to question them and thus to delve into other areas to see what happened.

I would agree that the books all take the samer format, and that yes often the same chap crops up in them (Rory Mcleod to name one) but i find this to have an advantagous thread running through the books and not a hinderence.

Macdonald should not be dismissed out of hand but used as a gentle intro to subjects before the reader gets down to the nitty gritty of the subject else where. I found i had many questions after reading her books and this spurred me to delve deeper into other books.

Without '1914' and the 'Somme' i would possibly not be here today, so some may say she has served me well (others may curse her!)

Let all read her and decide for themself. As Martin says an introduction.

regards
Arm.

I have found all her books which I have read interesting, but I trust the early ones least as they are more based on survivor accounts given decades later than the later books, much more based on contemporary diaries and letters.

None of these books give a good strategic overview, or even much of a view at any level above that of the individual, in my opinion.

I think such books have a place, but historians will always threat this type of oral history with extreme caution, as it is well known as a source of error. Please do read oral history, but not as your single source, as you will be mislead if you do.

I agree with Angie; survivor accounts are very one-sided. This is why they need to be used in conjunction with other accounts. Middlebrook, Steel and Hart and Berton all do this and this is why their books work better for me than Lyn's. Also some survivor accounts are simply better than others. To write a good survivor account one has to be perceptive, possessed of a good memory, reflective and able to switch between the big picture and the smaller details. Not everyone can do this. Some could notably Coppard, Blunden, Graves and Jünger to name a few. It should be noted that all were very bright guys. But they are relatively few.

Lyn's style is one thing : one either likes it or one does not. At least her style does no harm to the reader. For me a bigger issue is the number of factual errors she makes. Perhaps there is a case for an 'Aunty Lyn's Biggest Bloomers' thread on the Books page?

"Somme" and "They called it Passchendaele" were two of the first books I read about the war, and they played a very large part in getting me hooked. Ignore the odd factual error, and absorb the humanity and atmosphere she creates. They are easy to read, pacy and absorbing.

I then read "Roses". Funnily enough I did not enjoy that so much, but having re-read some of it recently it's pretty good I would say.

"1914". By now I was beginning to feel Hedley's "formula", and did not think that much of it, and I still do not.

"1915" I found hopeless, mostly on the grounds that it tries to cover too much ground in one go.

But, overall, as a starter, an introduction, I do not think the uninformed reader could do much better than "Somme" or "They called it Passchendaele".

Thanks everyone for your analysis of her books. I'll pick up a copy of "Somme" or "They called it Paschendale" and give them a try. I have already read Middlebrook's book on the Somme and rank it very high on my all-time military history list. I guess I'm looking for books similar to Mr. Middlebrook's regarding WWI.

Thanks again!

I'm reading at this moment 1914 -1918 Voices and Images of the Great War by Lyn MacDonald well worth the read.

I find that all Lyn MacDonald's books follow the line that the Generals always made mistakes and the common soldiers suffered. We then get accounts backing up her line. Her books give ammunition to the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' believers.
'1915' was the worst book I have read on the Great War, it doesn't even provoke discussion or argument.

SEAN

All of us in WFA owe a great debt to this lady because of the huge number of people she has introduced to the Great War, also because she took statements from many whose stories, accurate or not, would have been lost.
One does not read her strictly for military history but for what the men were like and what they thought.
She was once nice enough to answer a letter I wrote her, got to like that too.
Yes they are formulaic , so what. Yes 1915 is weak but 1914 is quite good and Somme and Some Called It Passchendale are good enough that I read them six or so times each before I acquired a large WW1 library.
We owe Lyn, big time, probably more than any other author. We will rememeber them... And because of her there are many more of us than there would have been without her.

Spot o0n, Paul. The original thread sought a starter book, An initiate won't be interested in depth or accuracy - indeed, such an approach would deter many from further reading.

No, she's telling tales. Soldiers' tales. And as long as the listener understands that old soldiers are no different from any other old whatevers', with the potential for exaggeration, forgetfulness, confusion - great - it's the atmosphere she conjures up.

Chris