By Mark Adkin, 285pp, 1996 Leo Cooper

The Charge is probably one of the first books on the charge of the Light Brigade to be written by an author who actually visited the battlefield, at least in this century. Adkin is a retired British Officer and his weight of military knowledge contrasts sharply with the amateurish fumbling of his subjects.

Adkin singles out no scapegoats, but lays the blame, in different measure at the feet of his "Four Horsemen of Calamity": Raglan, Nolan, Lucan and Cardigan, who by their perverse interactions with each other, practically doomed to destruction the finest body of light cavalry Britain had to offer.

In his telling of the tale, the author includes no less than 15 maps and 7 sketches of the view seen by Raglan from his vantage point upon the Sapoune Heights. 33 photographic plates are also included.

The book begins with the author taking us to the floor of the North Valley at Balaclava, while the redoubt atop Canrobert's Hill comes under attack from Russian infantry, through the background of the Crimean War, to the "charge" of the Heavy Brigade against odds that are not as overwhelming as Tennyson would have us believe, to the harrowing dash by the Light Brigade down the "Valley of Death" and their clash with Cossacks and Russian Uhlans, to the recriminations and regrets that followed in the aftermath.

This book will have readers re-thinking what they thought they knew about histories most famous mounted disaster.

This is a book that no Crimean War enthusiast should be without, and for which the general military historian will find fascinating reading. Heartily recommended.

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