Annual Booklist 2025 : Dr Stephen Quick
Stephen Quick is a lecturer at the Abu Dhabi-based Rabdan Academy and holds a PhD from King’s College London. Living in the Middle East for over a decade, his research interests include Britain’s post-World War Two counterinsurgency campaigns and Arabian Peninsula history. His book The Dhofar War: British Covert Campaigning in Arabia 1965-75 (University of Exeter Press, 2024) was a finalist for the 2024 SAHR Chapple Prize.
The books recommended are all great reads, popularist perhaps and often autobiographical in nature - or from perhaps less well-known conflicts - but are no worse for this. All the books were published many years ago but are available through online stores such as eBay, usually can be purchased (and delivered) for less than a fiver, and would make interesting and thought-provoking gifts. Happy festive reading!
Ranulph Fiennes, Where Soldiers Fear to Tread (Hodder & Stoughton, 1975)
An evocative journey into Arabia and one of the least known conflicts through the eyes of a combatant (a loaned officer in the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF)’s Northern Frontier Regiment) who is now a household name for his global exploration exploits. The book portrays his experiences of the earlier part of the decade-long war (1965-1975) in the Sultanate of Oman’s Dhofar province. It also provides a fascinating (and probably now long-lost) glimpses into a country virtually hidden from the outside world in the 1960s – and all told from the soldier’s perspective.
George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here (HarperCollins, 1995)
George Macdonald Fraser was one of the most celebrated British fiction authors of the twentieth Century. Although best known for his iconic Flashman series chronicling the historical adventures of his British officer anti-hero, Quartered Safe out Here is Fraser’s autobiographical account of his experiences fighting Japanese forces in Burma during the Second World War. Gripping, expertly told, and at times also very funny, the book is a much-needed companion to official histories which tend to gloss over the experience of the war in Burma from the soldiers’ ‘sharp end’ experience.
Ian Christie and Benjamin Labree, Empire or Independence 1760-1776 (Phaidon, 1976)
A book which serves fill some of the gaps presented by a critically under-taught and underappreciated subject within British military history. The book provides an account which serves to challenge some of the ‘historical truths’ present in the US national narrative. It also explores some of the less altruistic reasons for the movers and shakers of the colonies wanting to break from the mother country. Expertly researched and told, Empire or Independence 1760-1776 remains as relevant now as a key text for military history scholars of the period as it was at its original bicentennial-dated publication.
John Keegan, The First World War (Hutchinson, 1998)
Prodigious in scope and comprehensive in its research, the book provides an in-depth dive into all major theatres and campaigns that took place in the war. For students of history where the First World War is not their primary area of interest, the book provides a one-shop-fits-all study to give the reader an immersive and ‘joined up’ view of the war. As such, it provides a much-needed broader perspective about what was happening concurrently on a global scale – and in widely varying theatres, geographical settings and against a variety of adversaries - whilst the much more widely covered trench warfare aspect was underway in Flanders.
Mark Seaman, Bravest of the Brave (Michael O’Mara Books Ltd., 1999)
A biographical account of the career and Second World War exploits of Edward Yeo-Thomas (codename: The White Rabbit), an agent of the secretive ‘underground army’ of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) whose agents were largely drawn from British Army and commando ranks but also included many civilians. Yeo-Thomas’s exploits were legendary – but are now largely forgotten – and his ability to escape his captors was prodigious. Half-French by birth, he was responsible for liaison and the supply and development of the French Resistance and suffered grievous torture after capture by the Gestapo. The book is a reminder of the bravery of those who served in the clandestine world of the SOE and helped turn the tide of the war. The book also serves as a graphic reminder of the base thuggery of the German SS and Gestapo and the reason why so many gave their lives to rid the world of Nazi influence.
As for the book that needs to be written, as a student of the two world wars a comprehensive study of the experience of officers and soldiers of the unique generation who served in both is required. There are numerous individual biographical accounts but an academic study to compare, contrast and explain the mindsets and experiences of those who served, and led, throughout both world wars is needed. This should include those who had political and policy influence who – rightly or wrongly – took the country into its second destructive world war in two decades.