Annual Booklist 2021 : Ben Barry
Brigadier Ben Barry is the Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Ben joined the IISS in 2010, before which he served in the British Army rising to command an armoured infantry battalion and a multinational brigade on UN and NATO operations in Bosnia. He was director of the British Army Staff in the UK Ministry of Defence and author of the Army’s lessons learned analysis of post-conflict stabilisation of Iraq. His book Blood, Metal and Dust: How Victory turned into Defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq was runner-up for the 2020 SAHR Templer Medal.
There are many novels about the British Army. I’ve selected 5 that deserve a wider readership.
The Fort by Bernard Cornwell. A masterful portrait of the Penobscott Expedition during the American War of Independence. Cornwell’s cast of real and imagined characters includes the young Lieutenant John Moore. A brilliant case study of a joint operation.
The Sabre’s Edge by Alan Mallinson. There are no better novels of the British Army from the Peninsula War onwards, than Mallinson’s, which are comparable with Patrick O’Brian’s sea-going novels. This gripping account of the 1824 siege of Bhurtpore is my personal favourite. Mallinson’s history of the British Army is probably the best of the genre.
Warriors for the Working Day by Peter Elstob. The author served with the Royal Tank Regiment in 11th Armoured Division 1944-45. This stimulating novel closely mirrors his adventures, positive and negative, in that campaign.
A Breed of Heroes by Alan Judd. An exciting and realistic picture of a British battalion on operations in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.
Anatomy of a Soldier by Harry Parker. An account of a British officer before, during and after his operational tour in Afghanistan about a decade ago. Told from the multiple perspectives of inanimate objects, but the novel literary device works brilliantly.
The book(s) that have not been written. A series of exciting novels about the British Army in the late 20th and early 21st century to rival the novels of Allan Mallinson or Patrick O’Brien. The last forty or fifty years contain much opportunity for a series of novels that combine, action, adventure, engaging characters and military realism. Why have they not been written?