The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade

by Cecil Woodham-Smith

Overview

This history is a war story of astonishing courage and honor, of stupidity, of blood, death, agony — and waste.

Nothing in British campaign history has ever equaled the tragic farce that was the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War's Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854. In this fascinating study, Cecil Woodham-Smith shows that responsibility for the fatal mismanagement of the affair rested with the Earls of Cardigan and Lucan, brothers-in-law and sworn enemies for more than thirty years.

In revealing the combination of pride and obstinacy that was to prove so fatal, Woodham-Smith gives us a picture of a vanished world, in which hero'sm and military glory guaranteed an immortality impossible in a more cynical age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140012781
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/01/1991
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.72(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Cecil Blanche Woodman-Smith was a British historian and author of popular history books on the Victorian era, including The Great Hunger, Queen Victoria, The Reason Why, and Thin Men of Hadda. She was appointed CBE in 1960, and received honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland and the University of St. Andrews. She died in 1977.

Editorial Reviews

Tennyson single-mindedly immortalized the courage of Britain’s famous Light Cavalry Brigade as its members rode “cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them . . . into the valley of death.” But Woodham-Smith is more concerned with the tactical stupidity and sheer folly of that fateful charge in the Crimea. How could the successors of Wellington make such strategic mistakes just forty years after their brilliant victory at Waterloo? His answer spans two hundred years, eight tapes and two fascinating families--the Brudnills and the Binghams--detailing their rivalries, arrogance, foppishness, ignorance, shames and even a little glory. Stuart’s British reading captures the humor and subtle ironies in this painful period in history. Students of history will delight in this addition to the audio record. P.E.F. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

JULY 95 - AudioFile