Catastrophe
A magisterial chronicle of the calamity that crippled Europe in 1914.
1914: a year of unparalleled change. The year that diplomacy failed, Imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machineguns. What followed were the costliest days of the entire War. But how had it happened?
Reviews
‘His position as Britain’s leading military historian is now unassailable … In this enormously impressive new book, Hastings effortlessly masters the complex lead-up to and opening weeks of the First World War’
Nigel Jones, Telegraph
‘Magnificent … Hastings writes with an enviable grasp of pace and balance, as well as an acute eye for human detail … his book is at once moving, provocative and utterly engrossing’
Sunday Times
‘Masterly … this is history-writing at its best, scholarly and fluent … for anyone wanting to understand how that ghastly, much-misunderstood conflict came about, there could be no better place to start than this fine book’
The Times
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Related Articles
CHASTISE Events
Max will be talking about his forthcoming book CHASTISE: The Dam Busters Story 1943 at the following venues: Read More
Upcoming Events
This year Max will be talking about his book VIETNAM An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975 at the following venues: Read More
We can’t get enough of ‘Happy ever after’
The seasonal surge of sentimentality prompts in adults as well as children a yearning for happy endings, Read More
Confessions of a Reviewer
A decade ago, a publisher produced a set of short biographies of Britain’s 20th century prime ministers, which I reviewed unenthusiastically. Read More
Was Christmas better in the good old days? Don’t believe it
We shall never know the identity of the marketing genius who persuaded the early Christians to couple the pagan feast of the winter solstice with the birth of a child, Read More
Book of the Year
Vietnam has been chosen by a number of newspapers, historians and reviewers as their book of the year. Read More
No firing will take place after this hour
In a clearing within a Belgian wood on an overcast November morning, raindrops from a recent shower dripped off the trees. Read More
Our rudeness to European allies is shameful
Half a century ago, when that military circus the Royal Tournament was a national institution, there was a contretemps after a visiting Italian officer discovered that his Bersaglieri must perform in a sand arena. Read More
There’s no such thing as easy‑peasy politics
My five year-old granddaughter stood poised above the pool, contemplating the rings I had tossed to the bottom for her to retrieve. Read More
Rave Reviews for Vietnam
'Magnificent and moving ... Although Hastings deals with the high politics brilliantly, it is his account of the war on the ground that lifts this book above its competitors Read More
The Vietnam War: Deserters and dissidents
In his new book, Max Hastings recalls the brutal warfare he witnessed during the Vietnam War. In this extract, he recounts the resistance to it in America. Read More
The Vietnam War: Filthy, hungry, riddled with bug bites
As a young journalist, Max Hastings reported on the Vietnam War. In an exclusive extract from his new book, he recounts the reality of life for the soldiers. Read More
Bullets, bodies and late-night bars: Max Hastings’ adventures in Vietnam
Max Hastings was 24 and had never been to war. All that changed when he flew into battle-scarred Vietnam and witnessed the horror – and hedonism – of a war zone. Almost 50 years on, he’s written a book about the most controversial conflict of the 20th century and returns to the country to talk to survivors. Read More
Max Hastings on Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975
Max Hastings introduces his new book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. Read More
Max Hastings introduces his reporting from Vietnam
Ahead of the release of his new book, VIETNAM, Max Hastings introduces some clips of his reporting from the war. Read More
Stop hankering for the fantasy of a golden age
Nostalgia, vividly expressed in the cause-we-shall-not-mention-here, has become fashionable among Britain’s double-breasted classes. Read More
Yesterday’s Parties. Max Reviews ‘Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time’ by Hilary Spurling
Anthony Powell by Hilary Spurling (Hamish Hamilton)
A few decades ago, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell were widely regarded as Britain’s foremost novelists of the modern era. Read More
Early Praise for Vietnam
‘This is a comprehensive, spellbinding, surprisingly intimate, and altogether magnificent historical narrative.’
Tim O’Brien, Vietnam veteran and novelist Read More
Audio Extract: The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945
‘As gripping as any spy thriller, Hastings’s achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject’ Sunday Times Read More
Audio Extract: Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914
The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war. Read More
The English love a buffoon but the Boris Johnson joke went tragically wrong
A few months ago on the London Underground, a middle-aged stranger who found himself my neighbour demanded: “Excuse me asking, but you will know if anybody does — is Boris Johnson going to resign?” Read More
Don’t let’s delude ourselves over the special relationship
The only certainty about President Donald Trump’s visit next week is that it will unloose a fresh torrent of clichés about the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States. The man himself, if he feels benign, may toss us a bone by according it lip service. Read More
We need to tell the truth about defence
Defence secretary Gavin Williamson is said to be threatening the prime minister with a mutiny, perhaps even with a vote against the autumn budget, unless his department is given £20 billion towards filling its cash chasm. Read More
Splendid Isolation. Max reviews ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Alone’.
Dunkirk written and directed by Christopher Nolan
Alone by Michael Korda Read More
What’s New About the War?
Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge by Antony Beevor, Viking
Eisenhower’s Guerrillas by Benjamin F.Jones, OUP Read More
Imagining the Unimaginable. Max reviews ‘On War and Writing’
On War And Writing by Samuel Hynes (Chicago) Read More
Always Take Notes Podcast
In this episode, Simon speaks to Max Hastings, the best-selling military historian and erstwhile foreign correspondent and newspaper editor. Read More
A Message to My Readers
Well, everybody: Vietnam is done, finished, over. Now, I am just crossing my fingers that when you all get to see it in the autumn, you find the story as fascinating as I do. Read More
Max reviews ‘The Last Battle: Endgame on the Western Front, 1918’ by Peter Hart
The Last Battle: Endgame on the Western Front, 1918 by Peter Hart (Profile) Read More
Vietnam An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975
NEW BOOK COMING SEPTEMBER 2018
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive conflict since the Second World War, first creating a humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Read More
It’s an unholy mess – but here’s why I’m voting to stay in the EU
Max gives his personal view on the EU referendum in the Daily Mail. Read More
Andrew Lycett reviews The Secret War for The Daily Telegraph
Max Hastings is tickled by the irony that Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, has emerged as a celebrated secret warrior, when until recently he was virtually unknown outside his professional circles. Read More
Sinclair McKay reviews The Secret War for The Spectator
Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig's face. Read More
Guy Walters reviews The Secret War for Country Life
It is impossible to quantify the number of books that have been written about the Second World War. Read More
Paul Gannon Reviews The Secret War
Max Hastings takes on a massive subject in his latest book, the role played by intelligence and secret operations in the second world war. Read More
Laurence Rees reviews The Secret War for the Sunday Times
The history of the secret intelligence conflict during the Second World War is so well trodden that the pickings for any new writer traversing this ground ought to be thin. Read More
Critical acclaim for The Secret War
Hailed as 'the best single volume yet written on the subject' by the Sunday Times, Max's new book, The Secret War, is an instant number one Sunday Times bestseller. Here are some of the fantastic reviews so far: Read More
Max introduces The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945
Max Hastings introduces his new book The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945. … Read More
Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914
In 1914, Europe plunged into the 20th century’s first terrible act of self-immolation - what was then called The Great War. On the eve of its centenary, Max Hastings seeks to explain both how the conflict came about and what befell millions of men and women during the first months of strife. Read More
Introducing The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-45
Max’s new book – published in autumn 2015 – is a portrait of the role played by espionage, code-breaking and intelligence in the Second World War. Read More
National Archives Visit
Max Hastings visits the National Archives… Read More
Max introduces Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914
Max Hastings introduces his new book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914. Read More
Critical acclaim for Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914
Hailed as 'excellent' by Andrew Marr, Max's new book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, published on 12th September, is now in its fifth week in the Sunday Times top ten non-fiction bestsellers. Read More
Max’s Book Extracts
Sample chapters of Max's books listed below are available to read: Read More
RUSI 2012 Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature
On 19 July Max was presented with the Royal United Services Institution 2012 Duke of Westminster's medal for military literature, for All Hell Let Loose. Read More
Pritzker Military Library Literature Award
On Saturday 27 October 2012 at a dinner and ceremony at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Max was presented with the annual literary prize of the Pritzker Military Library, accompanied by a cheque for $100,000, for his contribution to military writing. Read More
All Hell Let Loose – Bestselling Paperback
Thanks to all my readers in Britain who have so far bought over 250,000 copies of All Hell Let Loose and many more worldwide. Read More
Your feedback for the All Hell Let Loose paperback
All Hell Let Loose is now available to British readers in paperback and I hope many more of you will enjoy it as much as the hardback audience has done. Read More
The wrong war in the wrong place. Every day we linger there means more lives wasted.
This article was published in The Daily Mail on 9th March Read More
I’ve not changed my mind: our banks are brutish institutions run by brutes
This article was published in The Daily Mail on 20th February Read More
All Hell Let Loose audio books
All Hell Let Loose soon to be released in various audio formats. Read More
Martin Rubin reviews Inferno for The Chronicle
"If there is a contemporary British historian who is the chronicler of World War II, it would be Max Hastings. Read More
On the Black Sea with Strangers
This article was published in The Financial Times on 25th November 2011 Read More
From D-Day to Victory in Europe
A clip from Max Hastings’ D-Day to Victory in Europe… Read More
Did You Really Shoot the Television? [Pt.2]
Part 2 – In his memoir Max Hastings recalls the ill-matched marriage of his parents, journalists ‘Mac’ Hastings and Anne Scott James. Read More
Did You Really Shoot the Television? [Pt.1]
Part 1 – In his memoir Max Hastings recalls the ill-matched marriage of his parents, journalists ‘Mac’ Hastings and Anne Scott James. Read More
Washington Post reviews All Hell Let Loose
Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post 4th November:
"Max Hastings begins his magisterial history of World War II with the simple declaration, “This is a book chiefly about human experience.” Nearly 500 pages later he expands upon that: Read More
Profile of Max from The Telegraph
What makes military historian Max Hastings keep on writing about the Second World War?
The former Daily Telegraph editor has a voracious capacity for work, rising at 5am and often writing 5,000 words a day. His new book, All Hell Let Loose, runs to 675 pages.
By Elizabeth Grice Read More
Looters in suits
This article was published in the Daily Mail in September 2011.
Three years ago this week, the collapse of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers signalled the onset of the global financial crisis, which has since escalated into a sovereign debt nightmare, boiling around us still. Read More
Did You Really Shoot the Television?
Max Hastings on his book Did You Really Shoot the Television?. Read Max’s introduction here. Read More
Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45
Max Hastings talks about his book Finest Years:Churchill as Warlord 1940-45. Read More
Introducing All Hell Let Loose
Reflecting Max Hastings’s thirty-five years of research on World War II, All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events, but focuses chiefly upon human experience, which varied immensely from campaign to campaign, continent to continent. Read More
Max introduces All Hell Let Loose
Max Hastings introduces his new book, All Hell Let Loose. Read More
Max’s Lecture on All Hell Let Loose
I have written All Hell Let Loose (published in US as Inferno) with two ideas in mind: first, to try to offer some of my own thoughts about great issues which I haven’t discussed in earlier books, and about which I hope that I may have something new to bring to the party- to complete my personal cycle about the Second World War, if you like. Read More
Critical acclaim for Going to the Wars
Max Hastings grew up with romantic dreams of a life amongst warriors. But after his failure as a parachute soldier in Cyprus in 1963, he became a journalist instead. Before he was 30 he had reported conflicts in Northern Ireland, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, Cyprus, Rhodesia, India and a string of other trouble spots. His final effort was as a war correspondent during the Falklands War. Going to the Wars is a story of his experiences reporting from these battlefields. It is also the story of a self-confessed coward: a writer with heroic ambitions who found himself recording the acts of heroes. Read More
Max’s Lecture on The Media and Modern Warfare
Professional soldiers through the past century and a half have seldom thought much of the journalists who have accompanied them to war. William Howard Russell of The Times, father of modern war corresponding, was sometimes feared by the generals of the Crimea, but never admired by them. In the early days of the American Civil War, an idealistic Union general named Irvin McDowell said that he had arranged for correspondents to take the field with the army, “and I have suggested to them that they should wear white uniforms to indicate their purity of their characters.” It was not long before any delusions of that sort were shattered. By 1898, when General Kitchener started his expeditionary force up the Nile to defeat the Mahdi, he was best remembered among the accompanying journalists for his answer when they besieged his tent one morning in search of news: “Out of my way, you drunken swabs!” Read More
Max’s Lecture on State of The Union
A lecture on 'The State of The Union' given in 2006 for the Scottish National Trust.
In 1617 an English courtier, Sir Anthony Weldon, reported biliously on his experience in Scotland: 'There is great store of fowl, too, as foul houses, foul sheets, foul linen, foul dishes and pots, foul trenchers and napkins'. Scots have been defending themselves against such horrid neighbourly condescensions for well over 400 years. When that likeable Aberdeenshire lawyer Sir James Craig came south with James VI and I in 1603, he sought to correct the libellous English image of his homeland: 'There is no country in which a man can live more pleasantly and delicately than Scotland. Nowhere else are fish so plentiful; indeed, unless they are freshly caught on the very day we refuse to eat them. There is meat of every kind. Nowhere else will you will find more tender beef and mutton…our servants are content with oatmeal, which makes them hardy’. Read More
Max’s Ruttenberg Lecture
David Cameron and Barack Obama said in a joint statement at the end of the president’s recent state visit to London that the relationship between our two countries is not merely special, but essential. This was a pleasantly emollient assertion, characteristic of the things statesmen say in such circumstances. But this evening I want to discuss how far it seems justified by realities, past and present, with special reference to defence, which is my own field; and what we, the British, as ever the lesser player and often suppliant, might do to strengthen our side of the affiliation. I use the word affiliation, rather than partnership, advisedly, for it seems to me that many of the difficulties and disappointments that landmark our exchanges with the United States result from exaggerated hopes of what Britain may realistically expect from its relationship with the most powerful nation on earth. Read More
Max’s Lecture on The Falklands
The Falklands was a freak of history which today to me, and probably to you, seems almost as remote as the Boer War. Read More
CPRE Lecture
Each time CPRE branches get together, many of us find ourselves thinking that there is more to alarm us, and more to fight for, than there was last time. Read More
Cameron Lecture
I am sceptical, as maybe are you, about my claims to give this lecture. I have committed every known folly in our trade, and invented some of my own. Read More
Max introduces Warriors: Extraordinary Tales From The Battlefield
Warriors is an old-fashioned book, or at least a book about old-fashioned conflicts, because it’s about people rather than ‘platforms’, that unlovely modern phrase for tanks, ships, planes. I’ve written about 15 remarkable characters- some successes and some failures- who made their marks on conflicts of the past two centuries, and tried to explore what we can learn from them about human nature amid the changing face of war. Read More
Max introduces Nemesis: The Battle For Japan 1944-45
Why do people like me go on writing books about the Second World War ? 62 years after it ended, what new can there possibly be to be said, about the most exhaustively chronicled event in human history ? On the odd occasions when a new book is published which claims to have uncovered revelations- that Winston Churchill secretly plotted De Gaulle’s assassination or that allied troops murdered thousands of German prisoners in Europe in 1945, they always turn out to be nonsense. Read More
Max introduces Did You Really Shoot The Television: A Family Fable
Almost all of us are intrigued by our own heredity. In this book, I’ve recounted the picaresque little saga of mine. The Hastingses weren’t at all important people, but they did some extraordinary and sometimes pretty weird things. And because they were writers for three generations, they wrote them down. When I did BBC’s Desert Island Discs back in 1986, I was pretty discreet about our tumultuous rows and my admittedly pretty awful childhood behaviour. But when my mother, Anne Scott-James, was DID’s guest at the age of 90 in 2003, to the audience’s delight and my toe-curling embarrassment, she regaled Sue Lawley with some horror stories, not least about my doings. For weeks afterwards, people came up to me in petrol stations and other unlikely places, asking: ‘Ere- did you really shoot the television ?’. It’s because people seemed intrigued by that question that I made it the title of this book. I’ll explain it in due course, but I want to make plain immediately that the victim was not a big set. Read More
Max’s Lecture on Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45
To a remarkable degree, even in 2010 the period of Winston Churchill’s war leadership continues to define many British people’s view of our own country. We have been told more about him than any other human being. Thousands of people of many nations have recorded encounters. The most vivid wartime memory of a British Eighth Army veteran whom I once met derived from a day in August 1942 when he found the prime minister his neighbour in a North African desert latrine. Read More
Max’s Lecture on Armageddon: The Battle For Germany 1944-45
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Forty-something years ago, when I was a teenager, even then avidly preoccupied with the Second World War, the study of its history was still dominated by fiercely nationalistic perceptions. Americans wildly overrated their battlefield contribution to victory, and perhaps underestimated their decisive industrial one. The British, astonishingly enough, still perceived themselves as the inhabitants of middle earth. The Russians barely acknowledged that the western allies had participated in the war at all. Read More
Max reviews The White War by Mark Thompson
The White War by Mark Thompson (Basic Books)
Many Anglo-Saxons perceive Italy’s role in modern history as marginal and verging upon absurdity. Few American or British people contrived to hate Mussolini and his nation in the Second World War as they hated Hitler and his, because they did not fear Italians in the same way. There were those ponderous jokes which pleased stupid men with large moustaches in English pubs in the 1950s, about Italian tanks lavishly equipped with reverse gears. The day after Italy entered World War I in May 1915, a Slovene child in the Hapsburg Alpine village of Caporetto contributed something to the same legend by exclaiming as he saw Bersaglieri troops cycling towards him in their exotic plumed hats: ‘Daddy, daddy, look at all the ladies coming here on bikes !’ (p.71). Read More
Max reviews The Crimean War
The Crimean War by Orlando Figes (Metropolitan Books)
The Crimean War In The British Imagination by Stefanie Markovits (Cambridge)
Considering the depth of mutual suspicion and animosity between Britain and Russia after 1815, it is astonishing that the lion and bear have fought each other only twice. At Winston Churchill’s behest, British forces played a desultory role supporting the White interest in the 1919-21 Civil War. The nations clashed much more fiercely between 1854 and 1856, when the Crimean War made a flagellatory impact on British society: it set a benchmark for political and military bungling, and public recrimination about it, which endures today. Read More
Critical acclaim for All Hell Let Loose
(Published as INFERNO in the US) From the New York Times: “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945” sums up and surpasses all his previous publications: a new, original and necessary history, in many ways the crowning of a life’s work Read More
Max’s 2011 Ruttenberg Lecture
Sir Max Hastings delivers the 2011 Ruttenberg Lecture “Defending the Essential Relationship: Britain and the United States Fighting Together in the 21st Century”… Read More
A Glimpse of a Work in Progress
Max's next book is to be a study of 1914- the approach to the First World War, its outbreak and early campaigns up to December, when the vast European battles of movement ended, and the trench stalemate became acknowledged on both the Eastern and Western fronts.
1914: Europe's Tragedy will feature Max's usual blend of top-down analysis and bottom-up human experience, mostly based on research in archives around Europe. Below is a snapshot, a random sample, of a few of the hundreds of pages of notes the author has already assembled, before starting to write the epic narrative that will be published for the centenary in 2014. Read More
