Great Writers on the Great War: Buchan’s War

John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, spent the First World War serving in a variety of official positions, but he also helped to produce a monthly magazine chronicling the history of the war, which was later published in twenty-four volumes as Nelson’s History of the War. With his access to secret information about the course of the war, Buchan had a clear grasp of the situation and in this book he puts it across to the reader with all the narrative skill of a novelist. Buchan’s War takes us through some of the key campaigns and battles of the war, from the opening of the fighting and the Battle of the Marne via Verdun, Jutland and the Somme to the last German offensives in 1918 and the Armistice, in the words of one of Britain’s greatest thriller writers.