Hell Riders
The Truth about the Charge of the Light Brigade
By Terry Brighton
(Holt Paperbacks, Paperback, 9780805079357, 400pp.)
Publication Date: August 11, 2005
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: Europe - Great Britain - General, Military - Other
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“An outstanding work that strips away much of the nonsense that has surrounded a tragic military blunder . . . [a] splendid examination.” —Booklist
On October 25, 1854, acting in defense of their base at Balaklava during the Crimean War, the Light Brigade of the British Cavalry Division made the most magnificent and brutal charge in military history. Seven hundred men armed with sabers and lances charged straight at the muzzles of Russian cannons. In the slaughter that followed, many fell to roundshot and shell. Those who survived took a terrible revenge on the enemy.
In this vivid and extraordinarily detailed account of the charge and the bloody melee that followed, Terry Brighton draws on twenty years of research to tell the story in the words of the survivors themselves for the first time.
Hell Riders takes the reader closer than ever before to the experience of charging into the valley of death, and reveals the horrific truth about the charge of the Light Brigade exactly as the survivors lived it.
Terry Brighton is the curator of the Queen’s Royal Lancers Museum, the direct descendants of the 17th Lancers who led the charge of the Light Brigade. He is a member of the Crimean War Research Society and an authority on the Crimean War. He lives in England.
“An example to all popular historians of how to combine a
gripping yarn with deep insight into the social and cultural forces driving the action.” —Publishers Weekly
“Brighton recounts the events as the survivors themselves remembered them . . . Readers who wish to avoid revisionist history will find the firsthand accounts difficult to resist.”
—Military History
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