The Waterloo Companion
Book Review
by Peter Hofschröer
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by Mark Adkin, Aurum Press, 432 pp, hbk, illus, ISBN 1-85410-764-X, Price £40.00. Billed as “the complete guide to history’s most famous land battle”, this is the best-presented work on the Waterloo Campaign ever published. It is lavishly illustrated in full colour throughout, and much thought and care has been put into the choice of illustration. There are strategic and tactical maps, graphically presented orders-of-battle, panoramic photos of parts of the battlefield with troop positions marked, photos of landmarks and other points of interest, uniform plates, formation diagrams, line drawings showing equipment and weapons and how they were used. In short, everything of importance to understanding the armies, weapons and tactics of the period is explained with extraordinary clarity. This particular aspect of the book is exemplary. The text also is well thought out, planned and presented. The chapters cover matters such as an outline of the campaign, command and control, the battlefield, all branches of the armed forces, even including how the medical forces operated, and an outline of the highlights of the battle. This is rounded off by an interesting section on myths and controversies, although only a selected few of the many are discussed. There will no doubt those who will quibble over the details (Blücher was not illiterate, that is a myth made up by Longford!), but any such minor errors hardly detract from the whole. I have only one substantial complaint about this book. It is an ideal companion for visitors to the battlefield. How is anybody supposed to get a tome that size into his pocket? Are there plans to produce a more portable guidebook? “The Waterloo Companion” is a magnificent book that will remain a standard work for many years to come. Under Review Book Reviews
The Waterloo Companion Memoirs of Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition, 1798-1801 A Desperate Business - Wellington, the British Army and the Waterloo Campaign Wellington's Belgian Allies 1815 Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #65 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com |