STARING AT GOD
BRITAIN IN THE GREAT WAR
‘ Staring at God is the first serious and really wide-ranging history of the Home Front during the Great War for decades,’ wrote Andrew Roberts in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Scholarly, objective and extremely well-written, it describes how, in Heffer’s words, “the government and people of a great naval and mercantile power, shaped by the tenets of laissez-faire, broke with traditions of their culture, liberties, doctrines and customs, and adapted to total war”... Heffer’s eye for the telling detail is evident on almost every page.
‘To illustrate how high British morale was at the outbreak of war, for example, he tells us that when Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, ran out of petrol in Reading and went into a local club, the members cheered him and sang
Rule Britannia. This is emphatically not a military history, but a social, cultural and political history, one in which ordinary Britons receive proper admiration for what they endured, but politicians are excoriated for the way they put personal ambition before public service.’
Writing in the Times, Gerard Degroot described the book as ‘a vast compendium of atrocious political conduct. Heffer is an equalopportunity critic — almost no one escapes reproach.’ Nonetheless Lloyd George comes off worst of all. ‘Heffer’s condemnation of Haig’s strategic blunders is refreshing — too often historians of his conservative political bent feel obliged to defend him. Yet that makes the author even more contemptuous of Lloyd George’s failure to bring Haig under control.’ Despite the emphasis on high politics, the author indulges ‘his delightful addiction to quirky facts. There’s interesting detail about dogs, horse chestnuts and pigeons, to name a few. The last had a bad war, being shot as spies or cooked in pies.’