Crimean Blunder

Book excerpt: First published in 1960, this book details the events in Turkey, the Crimea and the shores of the Black Sea during the military conflict fought from October 1853 to March 1856, in which Russia lost to an alliance of France, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. In writing his book, English-born Zimbabwean author and BSA Police Reserve Superintendent, Peter Gibbs, attempts to tell a plain story, rather than to present a scholarly history text, and this is reflected in his easy-to-read yet highly informative style of writing. An excellent account, richly illustrated throughout with detailed maps and photographs taken during the Crimean war. “[I]f the Crimean War deserves no label of greatness it cannot be dismissed as altogether negligible as wars go, if only because it cost nearly three hundred thousand lives.”—Peter Gibbs