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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