Changes

|title=The Glorious First of June

|author=Sam Willis

|reviewer=Andy Lancaster

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=978-1849160384

|pages=375

|publisher=Quercus Publishing Plc

|date=September 2011

|summary=Naval history seems such a rarefied subject that one might imagine this book having limited appeal. But Willis' account of this tremendous but inconclusive sea battle not only dynamical recreates the events and atmosphere of the day but clearly and dramatically puts everything in vivid context. The book becomes a classic, exploring Man's reasons for warfare, and his reactions to its outcomes.

}}

There is something immediately engaging and dynamic about Willis's style, telling us about complex events but through the eyes of a witness to them, and in that it has similarities to parts of [[Remember, Remember the Fifth of November by James Sharpe]] in which some of the complexities of religious strife in the 1600s are made clear for the lay reader. But (Dr) Sam Willis is a painstaking professional scholar and one of the pleasures of his book is following the detail of the research taking us through many interesting and often small human stories which bring the events to life. [[The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War by Ben Shephard]] manages exactly the same blend of humanity and scholarship in its exploration of what happened to some of the millions of lives touched by the Second World War.

{{commenthead}}