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Riding the Retreat: Mons to the Marne 1914 Revisited
By blending military history, personal testimonies and an account of his own ride along the route, Richard Holmes provides a unique glimpse into the summer the old world ended.
The retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Mons in the early months of the First World War is one of the great dramas of European history. Here, Richard Holmes blends his recreation of the military campaign, contemporary testimony and an account of his own ride along the route of the retreat from Mons to the Marne where the German advance was stopped.
The retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Mons in the early months of the First World War is one of the great dramas of European history. Here, Richard Holmes blends his recreation of the military campaign, contemporary testimony and an account of his own ride along the route of the retreat from Mons to the Marne where the German advance was stopped.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Richard Holmes
116 books93 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
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Edward Richard Holmes was Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science. He was educated at Cambridge, Northern Illinois, and Reading Universities, and carried out his doctoral research on the French army of the Second Empire. For many years he taught military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
A celebrated military historian, Holmes is the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed Tommy and Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. His dozen other books include Dusty Warriors, Sahib, The Western Front, The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French, The Road to Sedan, Firing Line, The Second World War in Photographs and Fatal Avenue: A Traveller’s History of Northern France and Flanders (also published by Pimlico).
He was general editor of The Oxford Companion to Military History and has presented eight BBC TV series, including ‘War Walks’, ‘The Western Front’ and ‘Battlefields’, and is famous for his hugely successful series ‘Wellington: The Iron Duke’ and ‘Rebels and Redcoats’.
See this thread for more information.
Edward Richard Holmes was Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science. He was educated at Cambridge, Northern Illinois, and Reading Universities, and carried out his doctoral research on the French army of the Second Empire. For many years he taught military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
A celebrated military historian, Holmes is the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed Tommy and Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. His dozen other books include Dusty Warriors, Sahib, The Western Front, The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French, The Road to Sedan, Firing Line, The Second World War in Photographs and Fatal Avenue: A Traveller’s History of Northern France and Flanders (also published by Pimlico).
He was general editor of The Oxford Companion to Military History and has presented eight BBC TV series, including ‘War Walks’, ‘The Western Front’ and ‘Battlefields’, and is famous for his hugely successful series ‘Wellington: The Iron Duke’ and ‘Rebels and Redcoats’.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 18, 2015
You have to get back to the physicality of a historical event to fully grasp it. This book does that and does it well. Some lyrical prose makes it even better.
June 16, 2025
"At 9.30 a.m. on the morning of 10 August 1993, I nudged my heels into Thatch's rough grey flanks and we ambled off to the war. Not to climb a Balkan ridgeline or splash across a Cambodian paddy-field, girt about with flak-jacket and cameras, but to follow the route of the British Expeditionary Force, which had passed that way seventy-nine years before....This is neither a book about strategy and tactics nor a travel book in any conventional sense of the word: it is a trip back through history, a journey over the horizon to glimpse the summer the old world ended."
So begins Richard Holmes' quirky and immensely enjoyable account of the BEF's retreat from Mons to the Marne in 1914, and his horseback expedition to retrace their steps some eighty years later.
The sections recounting the 1914 retreat are classic Richard Holmes, and he has rightly been described as the historian of the British soldier. I don't know any author who is better at conveying the human aspects of military history, and he writes with an enthusiasm for his subject which is infectious. He also has an obvious affection for soldiers and a desire to capture a sense of their experience and perspective. While the phase of the war described here was relatively mobile and involved relatively few soldiers (at least on the part of the British), there are also hints of the scale and horror of the Western Front that was to follow and the several accounts of battalions that were sacrificed to slow down the German advance were particularly sobering and moving. His narrative is peppered with carefully selected contemporary personal accounts and descriptions of what happened, and as usual with Richard Holmes, he tends to draw on the same sources repeatedly. The result of this is that we become quite attached to some of these real-life actors, which is effective in adding another layer of humanity to his prose.
As the author says, this book puts personal accounts of the events of August-September 1914 into the context of the ground on which they took place. The sections recounting the 1993 journey along the path of the retreat are an absolute delight, and the author records their travels with a zest and wit that had me laughing out loud on several occasions. Fueled by good wine, rich food and wonderful French and Belgian hospitality, three British soldiers, a student and a middle-aged professor of military history retraced the BEF's retreat through stifling summer heat, and despite much equine antics. This aspect of the book makes it quite unlike any other work of military history, and the combination of history and travelogue is effective in delivering a sense of what the men of 1914 must have experienced. As Holmes says himself, while their lack of sleep was self-inflicted, they were well fed and safe, and still found the ride hard work. How much more with little food and water, less sleep, and two German army corps nipping at your heels. If you enjoy either military history or travel writing (or better yet, both), you will appreciate this book.
So begins Richard Holmes' quirky and immensely enjoyable account of the BEF's retreat from Mons to the Marne in 1914, and his horseback expedition to retrace their steps some eighty years later.
The sections recounting the 1914 retreat are classic Richard Holmes, and he has rightly been described as the historian of the British soldier. I don't know any author who is better at conveying the human aspects of military history, and he writes with an enthusiasm for his subject which is infectious. He also has an obvious affection for soldiers and a desire to capture a sense of their experience and perspective. While the phase of the war described here was relatively mobile and involved relatively few soldiers (at least on the part of the British), there are also hints of the scale and horror of the Western Front that was to follow and the several accounts of battalions that were sacrificed to slow down the German advance were particularly sobering and moving. His narrative is peppered with carefully selected contemporary personal accounts and descriptions of what happened, and as usual with Richard Holmes, he tends to draw on the same sources repeatedly. The result of this is that we become quite attached to some of these real-life actors, which is effective in adding another layer of humanity to his prose.
As the author says, this book puts personal accounts of the events of August-September 1914 into the context of the ground on which they took place. The sections recounting the 1993 journey along the path of the retreat are an absolute delight, and the author records their travels with a zest and wit that had me laughing out loud on several occasions. Fueled by good wine, rich food and wonderful French and Belgian hospitality, three British soldiers, a student and a middle-aged professor of military history retraced the BEF's retreat through stifling summer heat, and despite much equine antics. This aspect of the book makes it quite unlike any other work of military history, and the combination of history and travelogue is effective in delivering a sense of what the men of 1914 must have experienced. As Holmes says himself, while their lack of sleep was self-inflicted, they were well fed and safe, and still found the ride hard work. How much more with little food and water, less sleep, and two German army corps nipping at your heels. If you enjoy either military history or travel writing (or better yet, both), you will appreciate this book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews