Book dossier

The Crimean war

by Andrew D. Lambert

During the Crimean War, for the first time, newspaper correspondents were able to provide the public with eye-witness accounts of the scenes of conflict. This book combines such first-hand descriptions from The Times of London with an authoritative discussion of the war, based on the latest historical scholarship. In the process a welcome reassessment of the war emerges. In addition to the famous accounts submitted by William Howard Russell all areas of the Black Sea theatre are covered, including the Sea of Azov, the Caucasus and Bulgaria, along with the other major theatre of war, the Baltic, where the Admiral Commander-in-Chief sometimes acted as Times correspondent. This marks a return to the contemporary perception of the war, where the whole conflict was observed, rather than the subsequent concentration on the heroism, incompetence and recovery on the few square miles of the Crimean Uplands that have come to dominate the modern image of the war. It is a curious irony that the instrument by which the illusion of a 'Crimean' War was created, the stark images published in The Times, should now be used to restore a due sense of proportion. . The standards, objects and methods employed by the journalists in this, the first war to be covered in the modern sense, are also considered, making this a comprehensive account of the 'first newspaper war'.