This history is largely a biography of the two principal characters involved in the 1854 Charge of the Light Brigade, Lords Cardigan and Lucan. It is unusually well written and, as the saying goes, “reads like a novel”. The sad pleasure that one finds in reading the history of great catastrophes is strongly stimulated in this account of two unpleasant and imperious aristocrats who almost seem to have been specifically created to end up bumbling into disaster in Crimea. The only possible structural flaw is an inserted chapter on the Irish potato famine, but it does bear on the life of Lord Lucan; the author, Cecil Blanche Woodham-Smith, wrote a book about the famine that was published nine years later in 1962. I also plan to find a copy of her biography of Florence Nightingale published in 1950.
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The author attributes the extravagant behavior of one or two characters to their being of Irish and Italian heritage, yet she does not attribute the behavior of the two mental deviants about whom the story is told to their being British. ( )

Aside from being one of the most accessible accounts of what the English did to the Irish ... this is one of those books that pulls together threads you know and threads you don't into one unstoppably readable story. ( )

So this is narrative history. The emphasis is on the former rather than the latter: there is no pretension of neutrality (only a sort of assumed common decency, of which the author is of course a natural and self-proclaimed advocate), it is light on sources, and it avoids troubling ambiguities and questions. Instead we have a brief and rip-roaring yarn that will place the charge of the Light Brigade firmly and vividly in your historical memory. It concentrates on two protagonists, Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan, and reduces them to something like caricatures. Perhaps they were, but I doubt it. I suspect real history is more nuanced than this blithe twentieth century critique of Britain's mid-Victorian ruling classes. But it is an accessible book, and easy to read; you don't have to agree with the author; and her assertions and conclusions are easily ignored. Indeed, they are the least valuable part of the book. One example of author bias that occurs to me to mention: she is full of praise for the Indian Army, and full of scorn for those Victorian English officers who failed to appreciate it. Fair enough. But her father was a career officer of the Indian Army, so too her brother, I think. If this book causes you to think and reflect about things outside the text it can only be a worthwhile read, and it is certainly and enjoyable one, but I do not think serious minds will return to it. ( )

I have to admit I started this book with a bad attitude, planning to skim it--it wasn't the one I wanted to read. In the end, I had to admit it was good popular history--shocking how ridiculous the guys in charge were--sound familiar? Nice to know that if nothing else, at a remove of 150 years people agree how ridiculous and disastrous leaders can be. Bonus: as a knitter, it's always fun to read about Raglans, Cardigans, and Balaclavas. ( )

The author goes back decades to reveal the personal history between the main decision makers on the day of the charge of the light brigade. It makes for fascinating reading, which does provide us with the reasons why the charge took place. First rate! ( )