Passchendaele in Perspective: The Third Battle of Ypres

by Peter H. Liddle

Published to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele, this book explores, on a world-wide basis, the real nature of the participants' experiences.

Genres: World War I

1074 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Dr Peter Liddle, FRHistS is a historian and author specialising in the study of the First and Second World Wars.

While teaching and lecturing during the 1960s, Liddle began collecting historical memorabilia in order to bring history to life for students. He founded the Liddle Collection which he continued to build for the next 30 years. The Liddle Collection was made up of personal experience documentation and memorabilia connected to the First World War. The collection is permanently housed at the University of Leeds.

Reviews

[Brian Manville · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the things I like to do is analyze things from every angle, to look an issue from different perspectives. The task is similar to a jeweler looking at a diamond from every angle looking for flaws. This is the tactic taken by Peter H. Liddle, et al in this book.

Liddle is merely the ring master over a series of nearly 30 essays covering Passchendaele from propaganda, health care, telegraphy, soldier morale, and whatnot. It does not seem to have missed any angles. Yet, the reading drags.

The most odious problem is the massive amount of spelling errors (which I always drop a star rating for as the editor has not done their job). The most frequent example of that is "FLOWEVER" instead of HOWEVER. This an other grammatical errors interrupt the flow of the essay. Beyond that, it seems that too many of these essays were too deep in the weeds for the casual historian. The topics seemed oddly specific and trivial. On balance, chapters on the soldiers from the Dominion nations were quite informative and gave a truer sense of what life is like.

Overall, the casual historian may want to skip over some chapters they don't engage with easily or at all. If said person read only the chapters that interested them, they would still get something out of the book.

BOTTOM LINE: Passchendaele examined like a diamond.

[Mariner77 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some fascinating insights into aspects of the battle that seldom get examined in detail. The chapter on the weather during the battle should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand 3rd Ypres.

[Eric Sharpe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting how do many conflicting views can be represented in one volume. There appears to be a theme of, "we don't actually know" . Having toured the, present day, salient. I cannot say that I would recognise Ypres today as described in the book. This raises many questions for me.