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  • Warriors

  • Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield
  • By: Max Hastings
  • Narrated by: Nigel Carrington
  • Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (42 ratings)

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Warriors

By: Max Hastings
Narrated by: Nigel Carrington
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$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

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Publisher's Summary

With an introduction read by Max Hastings. An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of 16 ‘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 40 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 16 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 admiration, but few friends. Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be – and how it has changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for gallantry - and why it is that so often the most successful warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men.

Max Hastings studied at Charterhouse and Oxford and became a foreign correspondent, reporting from more than 60 countries and 11 wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard. He has won many awards for his journalism. Among his best-selling books, Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. After 10 years as editor and then editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he now lives in Berkshire.

©2005 Max Hastings (P)2014 Audible Studios
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about Warriors

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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What's with the accents?

Interesting biographical sketches of noteworthy soldiers. Tge biggest flaw of the audio book was the atrocious accents. the American accents were bad but the attempt at Australian accents was completely appalling. Otherwise enjoyable

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Great read

Well narrated and easy listening.
An interesting read delving into the motivation of these heroes and their similarity in upbringing.

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Excellent

A great listen and a well performed audio book.
Max Hastings produced another brilliant work.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Particularly engaging series of biographies

Warriors are a breed apart, and Max Hastings has given some honest, balanced insight into how this is so. He avoids facile bombast to explain some of the traits that lead to extreme performance in war, and also how those same traits often hinder success in a society at peace.

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Worth a read

Really in depth look at war heroes.

On the narration: Is Sinai pronounced ‘sini-eye’?

Terrible Australian accent for Nancy Wake. Hard to pull off, admittedly.

Otherwise pretty good.

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Impressed

I really enjoyed this title, the telling of the tales was in-depth and informative, I especially liked the dam buster chapter as the movie of this tale was my dads favourite and we played the theme song at his funeral, imagine calling a dog that these days.

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