Updates

The Sunday Times  chose this Thursday’s episode 3 of Bullets, Boots and Bandages as a Critics’ choice: ‘Professor Saul David’s excellent series on military logistics turns to the “story of kit”, which gives him the opportunity to prance about wearing camouflaged body armour and “ballistic underwear” designed to protect the soldiers’ crown jewels from IEDs.’

The Radio Times added: ‘Saul David gets to grip with the latest kit in his excellent series about the nuts and bolts of warfare.  This final instalment starts with a longbow and we then get a brisk jog through the industrialisation of warfare.  But its also full of offbeat information – the Bank of England was set up to borrow money to finance wars; and schoolchildren collected conkers to make cordite in the First World War.  Give this man another series, and quickly.’

AA Gill, also in the Sunday Times, put the boot in: ‘Bullets, Boots and Bandages did for war what Moneball does for sport: extract the romance. Saul David is the latest eager young military historian who has gone up the line to death, walking and talking and holding up bits of murderous kit as if they were vibrators found in hotel drawers.’ Shame he didn’t watch episode one (food and health) where the murderous kit was conspicuous by its absence.

Saul’s new e-book ‘Great Military Commanders: Marlborough, Wellington and Slim’ is now available to download from Amazon Click here

Today’s Daily Mail includes a two-page feature (‘Heroes Treated Like Scum) on Saul’s new book All the King’s Men.  Click here to read

BBC Five Live’s Richard Bacon tweets that Saul’s new series Boots, Bullets and Bandages is ‘bloody good’ Click here for link

Saul’s new 3-part series on BBC4 continues to garner critical acclaim: Metro wrote: ‘How much does it take to feed an army of 80,000 men?  Three hundred cattle a day, roughly.  That’s the kind of minute detail that makes this account so fascinating… Energetic and engaging military history professor Saul David is the man leading us into battle.’

The Evening Standard  described Saul as ‘ineffably dashing’ and the series  as ‘a fascinating glimpse into the humbler side of warfare’.

The Sunday Times chose episode 2 as its ‘Pick of the day’ and Saul as ‘an engaging and enthusiastic presenter’, while the Radio Times added: ‘Historian Saul David tells fascinating stories of how generals stole a march on the enemy in his second instalment about military logistics. But the great thing is that the real detail comes from other experts, including a farrier…  It’s superb stuff, taking in the jerrycan and D-Day’s Mulberry harbour, through the difficulties of the Falklands right up to the present day.’

Saul’s new book All the King’s Men was praised in two national newspapers today.   The Sunday Times  wrote: ‘The real strength of this book lies in the eloquent exposition of the battles themselves, and the generals who fought them… Those wishing to immerse themselves in the golden age of British military success will relish David’s fine piece of history.’  The Sunday Telegraph added: ‘Compelling history… The book takes us grippingly through three separate but linked global conflicts with France… David keeps the narrative going at a brisk canter.’ Click here for link

There was advance praise for ‘Bullets, Boots and Bandages’, Saul’s new 3-part TV series on the history of military logistics, which starts on BBC4 at 9pm on Thursday 2 February.   It was pick of the day in Times (‘a riveting new series’), Sunday Times (‘fascinating series’), Radio Times (said the story was ‘delivered in crisp and manly style by a historian who should attract a following of his own’), and the Mail on Sunday (a ‘thrilling range of examples’ and ‘a fascinating new perspective on familiar history’).

One Minute interview with Saul in today\’s Independent