Annual Booklist 2022 : Dr Christian Tripodi
Dr Christian Tripodi is Reader in Irregular Warfare at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, and an Adjunct Scholar at the Irregular Warfare Institute at West Point. He is the author of Edge of Empire: The British Political Officer on the Northwest Frontier of India 1877-1947 (Routledge, 2011) and The Unknown Enemy: Counterinsurgency and the Illusion of Control (Cambridge University Press, 2021) which was shortlisted for the 2022 Templer medal.
While I’m not sure I even class myself as a military historian anymore, the field offers wonderful scholarship and commentary that constantly informs my work. So, here are my top five (for the moment, anyway).
Book One: By Tank into Normandy by Stuart Hills (Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2014)
This is a curious book. Unremarkable prose, understated in tone. Yet it manages to effortlessly convey the raw tension imposed upon tank crews fighting their way into the teeth of German defences in the latter stages of the War in Europe. Descriptions of the day-to-day business of life in an armoured regiment, and of the various personalities therein, are interspersed with tales of personal loss, vivid descriptions of the claustrophobic nature of tank warfare in close country, of shocking and sudden violence as the enemy projectile slams into the hull or turret of one’s vehicle, and of the horror that awaits any crewmember unable to escape their Sherman before the fire takes hold. The description of the unit’s padre assuming responsibility for recovering the charred remains of their comrades in order to spare the crews a vision of their own possible fate is a sobering read, particularly when it describes the world of the then 20-year-old Hills, still barely out of school.
Book Two: Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany 1919-1945 by David French (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Undoubtedly a work that has been mentioned more than once on these lists, but no serious historian of the British Army in World War Two can claim that their understanding of that organisation is complete without having read this work. Describing what the British Army did in battle is one thing. Understanding why it did those things in the way that it did is another matter entirely. French’s brand of scholarship in unpicking the intellectual, cultural, doctrinal and organisational underpinnings of the British Army’s approach to warfare in the interwar period and subsequently in the cauldron of World War Two does its usual thing, which is to say it forces every other historian to up their game or leave the pitch entirely.
Book Three: Unwinnable: Britain’s War in Afghanistan by Theo Farrell (Vintage, 2018)
Having recently written a book on COIN (Counterinsurgency), it would be odd for a work on this particular form of warfare not to feature in my top five. Theo Farrell’s Unwinnable says it all, really. An unsparing account of the ill-fated British campaign in Helmand by one of the world’s leading experts on that war. It leads us through the initial deployment of British forces to southern Afghanistan and the subsequent 8 years of counterinsurgency operations there before withdrawal in 2014. Farrell was rare for an academic, at least one working in a British university, in that he spent a healthy amount of time in Afghanistan during that period, acting as an advisor to some of the most senior British military officers and building the sorts of personal and professional links with commanders that would so vividly inform his work.
Book Four: The Changing of the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11 by Simon Akam (Scribe, 2021)
Polemical, but fascinating. Akam, whose brief experience of life in a cavalry regiment by way of a short service limited commission predated a successful journalistic career in Britain and the United States, returned to the fray to cast an eye over an organisation that obviously still fascinates him. The target of his enquiry is the British Army in the era of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Akam’s eyes it is an organisation stuffed full of good people but sabotaged by unwarranted self-regard, rigidity of thought, a lack of accountability and to some degree a lack of professionalism. The cadre of senior officers that commanded on operations during the period 2005-2010 come in for particular criticism. I don’t necessarily agree with his analysis but his marshalling of over 250 interviewees and his ability to weave their stories into the broader narrative of an Army’s shortcomings exposed by war is a remarkable feat.
Book Five: Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2019) by Jonathan Fennell
Jonathan’s a colleague of mine. A brilliant scholar who is destined to become one of the great World War Two historians. This book illustrates why. In academia it makes sense to write short books of no-consequence, which can be quickly racked up on one’s CV to provide the image of productivity and importance. Jonathan took six years to delve deep into the knotty subject of the British and Commonwealth Armies at War 1939-45 to explain, much in the spirit of David French, precisely why they fought as they did, which for Jonathan centres heavily upon the role of training and morale, and in so doing offers a deeply refreshing perspective on the performance of these armies in war. Marshalling a remarkable range of sources, facts and figures, he provides a fuller understanding of the Commonwealth armies, their relationships to the societies from which they were drawn, why they fought in the way that they did, and how they contributed so wholeheartedly to the victory that was won.
What book would I like to see written? Something deep and meaningful on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think a modern British equivalent to Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn, perhaps the outstanding novel of the Vietnam War. I don’t think it will ever happen, l but I live in hope.