ACCLAIMED author and historian Allan Mallinson will be at Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wye on Thursday, September 5 to talk about his fascinating new book 1914: Fight the Good Fight.

The book, published in the run up to the centenary of the First World War, is a revelatory new history of the origins of the war, of those first few crucial weeks of fighting, and of how Britain and its army fared.

“No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening,” wrote Churchill. “The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed.”

In this major new history, one of Britain’s foremost military historians and defence experts tackles the origins – and the opening first few weeks of fighting – of what would become known as “the war to end all wars”.

Mallinson brings his experience as a former infantry and cavalry officer, with 35 years’ service in the British Army, to bear on the individuals, circumstances and events and the result is a vivid, compelling new history of the beginnings of the Great War that speculates – tantalizingly – on what might have been.

Tickets are available from Rossiter Books in Ross (on 01989 564464) and Monmouth (01600 775572).