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Soldiers: Great Stories of War and Peace
Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting bestselling historian Max Hastings’s lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here you will meet Jewish heroes of the Bible, Rome’s captain of the gate, Queen Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Cromwell, Wellington, Napoleon’s marshals, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton and the modern SAS. There are tales of great writers who served in uniform including Cobbett and Tolstoy, Edward Gibbon and Siegfried Sassoon, Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and George MacDonald Fraser. Here are also stories of the female ‘abosi’ fighters of Dahomey and heroic ambulance drivers of World War I, together with the new-age women soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories reflect a change of mood towards warfare through the ages: though nations and movements continue to inflict terrible violence upon each other, most of humankind has retreated from the old notion of war as a sport or pastime, to acknowledge it as the supreme tragedy.
This is a book to inspire in turn fascination, excitement, horror, amazement, occasionally laughter. Max Hastings mingles respect for the courage of those who fight with compassion for those who become their victims, above all civilians, and especially in the twenty-first century, which some are already calling ‘the Post-Heroic Age’.
Here you will meet Jewish heroes of the Bible, Rome’s captain of the gate, Queen Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Cromwell, Wellington, Napoleon’s marshals, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton and the modern SAS. There are tales of great writers who served in uniform including Cobbett and Tolstoy, Edward Gibbon and Siegfried Sassoon, Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and George MacDonald Fraser. Here are also stories of the female ‘abosi’ fighters of Dahomey and heroic ambulance drivers of World War I, together with the new-age women soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories reflect a change of mood towards warfare through the ages: though nations and movements continue to inflict terrible violence upon each other, most of humankind has retreated from the old notion of war as a sport or pastime, to acknowledge it as the supreme tragedy.
This is a book to inspire in turn fascination, excitement, horror, amazement, occasionally laughter. Max Hastings mingles respect for the courage of those who fight with compassion for those who become their victims, above all civilians, and especially in the twenty-first century, which some are already calling ‘the Post-Heroic Age’.
496 pages, Paperback
Published July 8, 2025
90 people are currently reading
378 people want to read
About the author
Max Hastings
114 books1,732 followersSir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.
Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.
Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.
After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.
He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.
Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.
After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.
He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 8, 2022
Got 100 pages into this but could take no more. What a lazy book.
Max Hastings has collected together an essentially random series of anecdotes about war and soldiers from the beginning of recorded history to the present day, added a brief introductory paragraph to each one, and called it a book.
There is no discernible common theme to the stories he has chosen, and they vary from the well-attested through the dubious to frank invention and propaganda. He doesn't even seem to have picked the most interesting or unusual - the one featuring Julius Caesar, for example, is his account of his reconnaissance in force to Britain in 55BC, which, as the author acknowledges, we all had to read at school (some of us in English AND Latin). A lot of Caesar's writings survive, so why not pick a less familiar story ?
And a noted military historian, if he is going to stoop to a book like this, at the very least needs to provide some commentary on the value of the stories as history - Caesar, for example, wrote largely to bolster his reputation with an eye to public office. Much material about Rommel has to be read with the knowledge of the "Rommel Myth" : that his reputation as a "good German" and a military genius was to some extent manufactured by the British, who needed a palatable explanation for the rout of their superior forces in North Africa in 1941-2. No such analysis is provided, so we are left with a collection of "Boys' Own" derring-do stories with little idea of how much basis they have in fact.
Poor.
Max Hastings has collected together an essentially random series of anecdotes about war and soldiers from the beginning of recorded history to the present day, added a brief introductory paragraph to each one, and called it a book.
There is no discernible common theme to the stories he has chosen, and they vary from the well-attested through the dubious to frank invention and propaganda. He doesn't even seem to have picked the most interesting or unusual - the one featuring Julius Caesar, for example, is his account of his reconnaissance in force to Britain in 55BC, which, as the author acknowledges, we all had to read at school (some of us in English AND Latin). A lot of Caesar's writings survive, so why not pick a less familiar story ?
And a noted military historian, if he is going to stoop to a book like this, at the very least needs to provide some commentary on the value of the stories as history - Caesar, for example, wrote largely to bolster his reputation with an eye to public office. Much material about Rommel has to be read with the knowledge of the "Rommel Myth" : that his reputation as a "good German" and a military genius was to some extent manufactured by the British, who needed a palatable explanation for the rout of their superior forces in North Africa in 1941-2. No such analysis is provided, so we are left with a collection of "Boys' Own" derring-do stories with little idea of how much basis they have in fact.
Poor.
January 22, 2022
A collection of soldiers recollections collated by Max Hastings. These memories range from the King James Version of the Bible and up to the 20th Century. The stories are at times poignant, sad or brutal and provide an interesting insight from the perspective of ‘the person on the ground’ rather than the broader, strategic perspective of the historian. A valuable insight but probably of greater interest to those already familiar with the wider historical context and events of the battles and wars in which these individuals participated.
April 2, 2023
Journalist and historian Max Hastings brings together a collection of writing about the life of the soldier, starting in biblical times and coming up to date with the Gulf and Afghanistan.
The early accounts are mostly by academics but as literacy spreads among the common soldiery in the 19th century first hand experience plays a bigger part. The stories range from heroic to tragic to comic, and from generals to the common soldier.
Some stick particularly in the mind. The young officer who would become Field Marshal Montgomery going into action in World War I carrying a sword and realising that while he'd been trained to use it on the parade ground he had no idea how to kill some one with it, for example. Or the deeply moving last letter written by a squaddie killed in Iraq to his fiancée.
Overall, and interesting look at soldiering from a range of perspectives.
The early accounts are mostly by academics but as literacy spreads among the common soldiery in the 19th century first hand experience plays a bigger part. The stories range from heroic to tragic to comic, and from generals to the common soldier.
Some stick particularly in the mind. The young officer who would become Field Marshal Montgomery going into action in World War I carrying a sword and realising that while he'd been trained to use it on the parade ground he had no idea how to kill some one with it, for example. Or the deeply moving last letter written by a squaddie killed in Iraq to his fiancée.
Overall, and interesting look at soldiering from a range of perspectives.
April 15, 2023
This is a riveting volume of various tales of valour, humour, genius and tragedy to label some of the stories that take us from the Old Testament to contemporary theatres of war. I for sure left some tales tabbed so that I won’t be letting them slip from my memory.
February 28, 2022
At times shocking. At times you want to cry. The story of Rommels last day at home is a MUST read
February 15, 2022
A really interesting set of well edited tales of war, written by eye witnesses. Especially interesting to those who have been in or studied the military. I really enjoyed reading this book.
January 2, 2023
Max Hastings became a favorite military history author of mine after reading his excellent books on the Vietnam War and two WWII operations. Soldiers is a very different book: 345 short tales about and by soldiers from antiquity (he starts with the Bible) through the Wars on Terror. These are mostly not the heroic, action-packed battle stories one would expect. Instead, they are about the lives, deaths, acts of courage, honor, dishonor, brutality and atrocity.
As there’s no narrative or clear theme, it’s not a great book to read cover-to-cover, though you almost have to in order to ensure that your read the most interesting, tragic and touching stories.
The book is heavily-weighted towards soldiers and conflicts of Western armies, especially the British. A disproportionate number of stories are about British soldiers or are written by Brits about non-British soldiers. Many relate to British conflicts with which I was unfamiliar, or British military customs and protocols that it seemed like I would need to understand to appreciate certain stories. Late in the book, Hastings seems to try to compensate for a lack of female soldiers by including stories of many women soldiers of recent wars. Most of these, however, touch on love and relationships in the military, rather than soldiering, which seems to run counter to a goal of showing that “women are soldiers, too.”
There are interesting stories here, but the collection of hundreds of unrelated stories was losing my interest by the end.
As there’s no narrative or clear theme, it’s not a great book to read cover-to-cover, though you almost have to in order to ensure that your read the most interesting, tragic and touching stories.
The book is heavily-weighted towards soldiers and conflicts of Western armies, especially the British. A disproportionate number of stories are about British soldiers or are written by Brits about non-British soldiers. Many relate to British conflicts with which I was unfamiliar, or British military customs and protocols that it seemed like I would need to understand to appreciate certain stories. Late in the book, Hastings seems to try to compensate for a lack of female soldiers by including stories of many women soldiers of recent wars. Most of these, however, touch on love and relationships in the military, rather than soldiering, which seems to run counter to a goal of showing that “women are soldiers, too.”
There are interesting stories here, but the collection of hundreds of unrelated stories was losing my interest by the end.
Read
April 2, 2022I will admit I knew nothing about this book when I started reading it. I did not even notice the fact that it said, “edited by Max Hastings”. I just saw his name and started reading it, as I am a big fan of his writing. I then quickly found out that the book was a collection of stories collected by Max Hastings and put into one book.
The stores range from the biblical era (taken from the King James version of the bible) through ancient Greece and Rome, the English Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, both World Wars, then modern conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not all of them just an example of the span. The stories are arranged in mostly chronological order and there are a few stories that are about the same person in different stages of the war/conflict.
The stories are a broad mix ranging from comedic to depressing with some being very poignant. They also range in length from a couple of sentences to a few pages. One thing to note is that while most of them have a short introduction saying which conflict the story is from if you are not overly familiar with it you might end up going down a rabbit hole wanting to know more, at least I did a few times.
If you are interested in Military History then I recommend this book, it is a fairly easy read and as it is full of short stories perfect for reading in spurts when you can’t dedicate a long period of time to sit and read.
The stores range from the biblical era (taken from the King James version of the bible) through ancient Greece and Rome, the English Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, both World Wars, then modern conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not all of them just an example of the span. The stories are arranged in mostly chronological order and there are a few stories that are about the same person in different stages of the war/conflict.
The stories are a broad mix ranging from comedic to depressing with some being very poignant. They also range in length from a couple of sentences to a few pages. One thing to note is that while most of them have a short introduction saying which conflict the story is from if you are not overly familiar with it you might end up going down a rabbit hole wanting to know more, at least I did a few times.
If you are interested in Military History then I recommend this book, it is a fairly easy read and as it is full of short stories perfect for reading in spurts when you can’t dedicate a long period of time to sit and read.
March 8, 2023
This book is a collection of stories, essays, extracts with a military theme compiled and edited by Max Hastings. I am a great fan of Max Hastings and his works on military history are among my favourite books. However this compilation of military writing really didn't work for me. In total there are 345 extracts. I did like the fact that they are arranged in chronological order. The first extracts are from the Bible describing conflicts at the dawn of history. The book then runs through the centuries and the later sections of the book tell tales of the cataclysmic world wars of the 20th century right through to the 21st century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is an interesting collection. Inevitably there is a strong bias towards more recent historical conflicts as increased levels of literacy from the beginning of the 20th century means that more of the soldiers involved at the sharp end of warfare have written about their experiences. Perhaps it was the great variety of viewpoints and variations in the quality of writing that meant that I found this collection less than gripping.
June 13, 2023
Max Hastings is a cornerstone in military history with an expensive published works ranging from World War Two, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, and the Falklands War. As such his impressive literary style is one of the reviewer’s personal favourites, in his discipline Hastings is unrivalled.
Soldiers takes a unique approach to telling the stories of soldiers throughout the ages, largely in their own words pulling from primary sources such as letters, diary entries and commentary from the front line in battles/wars throughout the centuries. From the biblical siege of Jericho through the first-hand historical account of the titans of historical soldiers/commanders; Herodotus, often referred to as the ‘Father of History’, Livy, Julius Caesar, Cromwell and Churchill. To the common soldiers involved in countless wars throughout the history of the English (and later British Empire), such as the countless and often overlooked soldiers of the trenches of the First World War. One such account comes from Captain Henry Sadler who recounts his experience in the Somme, encountering a German soldier, chasing him down not to shoot him but to take his ‘smart looking helmet’, another of a British soldier sparing a German soldier’s life but asking for his wristwatch in return.
In total 345 accounts have been collated to provide an exciting, exhilarating and sometimes terribly horrific accounts of war and the experiences these soldiers went through. From the Ancient Greek and Romans to the insurgencies in Afghanistan. The only main criticism I can levy at the book, and I understand this is completely my own subjective opinion is I would have preferred more historical accounts of soldiers from further afield than the UK (only a handful from China and several from the American civil war) and further back in time. The vast majority of accounts come from either the Napoleonic Wars, WWI or WWII, I understand this is when copious records were written down and have survived to the present day, but it would have benefited the book if soldiers from further afield and from longer ago were included.
Having a member of the family recently join the armed forces this book provides an eye-opening account of what has happened before, and hopefully something that won’t happen in the same way again.
Soldiers takes a unique approach to telling the stories of soldiers throughout the ages, largely in their own words pulling from primary sources such as letters, diary entries and commentary from the front line in battles/wars throughout the centuries. From the biblical siege of Jericho through the first-hand historical account of the titans of historical soldiers/commanders; Herodotus, often referred to as the ‘Father of History’, Livy, Julius Caesar, Cromwell and Churchill. To the common soldiers involved in countless wars throughout the history of the English (and later British Empire), such as the countless and often overlooked soldiers of the trenches of the First World War. One such account comes from Captain Henry Sadler who recounts his experience in the Somme, encountering a German soldier, chasing him down not to shoot him but to take his ‘smart looking helmet’, another of a British soldier sparing a German soldier’s life but asking for his wristwatch in return.
In total 345 accounts have been collated to provide an exciting, exhilarating and sometimes terribly horrific accounts of war and the experiences these soldiers went through. From the Ancient Greek and Romans to the insurgencies in Afghanistan. The only main criticism I can levy at the book, and I understand this is completely my own subjective opinion is I would have preferred more historical accounts of soldiers from further afield than the UK (only a handful from China and several from the American civil war) and further back in time. The vast majority of accounts come from either the Napoleonic Wars, WWI or WWII, I understand this is when copious records were written down and have survived to the present day, but it would have benefited the book if soldiers from further afield and from longer ago were included.
Having a member of the family recently join the armed forces this book provides an eye-opening account of what has happened before, and hopefully something that won’t happen in the same way again.
October 3, 2023
Ex Military I enjoyed this book, a collection of stories from biblical times to contemporary conflict. Stories from the common soldier to the upper reaches of the military all told as related to the author.
It’s a book that you don’t need to plough through, its nature means you can dip in and out of it whenever you want.
Some great stories.
It’s a book that you don’t need to plough through, its nature means you can dip in and out of it whenever you want.
Some great stories.
August 26, 2022
I have to admit I did not read this cover to cover. I was mainly interested in the AW and military history from 1914 on to present day. What I did read I enjoyed greatly
November 22, 2025
An anthology of the human condition. Interesting but not as entertaining or awe-inspiring as the reviews would have you think.
May 20, 2023
Excellent read.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews