Soldiers - Tapa dura

An in-depth study of the character and spirit of soldiers. This book takes as its starting point interviews with Chelsea Pensioners whose lives in the army span the 20th century, and who have seen action from World War I to Korea. Author Philip Ziegler is fascinated by the value that war veterans share, which the army must have inculcated in them: self-discipline, acceptance of risk and pain, patriotism, and solidarity with their fellow soldiers. Of course there is sometimes bigotry, narrow-mindedness and even blinkered stupidity. Ziegler also addresses the question of whether army values are still admired in modern British society. Above all though, this book celebrates the lives and attitudes of soldiers and comes to an understanding of the ethos that means so much to them.

Philip Ziegler is the author of London at War, the biographer of, among others, Diana Cooper, Mountbatten, Harold Wilson and Edward VIII, and a historian of the Black Death. He is a skilled and sensitive interviewer and regards this book as the most important he has written.