An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen -warriors- from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Max Hastings.Over the course of forty years of writing about war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) - and by their practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from different nationalities in modern history - including Napoleon-s -blessed fool- Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan Doyle-s Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early 19th-century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who became the hero of Rorke-s Drift in the Zulu wars; and Squadron Leader Guy Gibson, the -dam buster- whose heroism in the skies of World War II earned him the nation''s admirat
