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The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars Paperback – 27 May 2010

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Patrick Hennessey (Author)
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Patrick Hennessey (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 155 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (27 May 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0141039264
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141039268
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.1 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (155 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 61,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Soldiers who can write are as rare as writers who can strip down a machinegun in 40 seconds, but Patrick Hennessey is one of the few (Sunday Times)

High-tempo, full-on . . . honest and revealing . . . a memoir brimming with vinegar and testosterone (Evening Standard)

The military memoir of the moment (Times)

A very fine book, a powerful dispatch from the front line ... what impresses is the sheer candour and immediacy (Spectator)

An extraordinary memoir . . . Hennessey has a reporter's eye for detail and a soldier's nose for bullshit (Guardian)

Outstanding . . . A classic of its kind (William Boyd, Sunday Herald, Books of the Year)

Harrowing and frequently funny . . . sparkles with wit, wisdom and boyish glee . . . His generation owns the war (Times)

Must rank as the most accomplished work of military witness to emerge from British war-fighting since 1945 (Independent)

Remarkable . . . conveys vividly what it's like to experience combat (Jeremy Paxman, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year)

An engaging mix of war reporting, stream of consciousness and reflections on the nature of conflict in the twenty-first century (Caroline Moorehead, Spectator, Books of the Year)

All politicians need to read honest accounts of war - at no time more than now - and Patrick Hennessey's The Junior Officers' Reading Club is one of the very best (David Cameron, Observer, Books of the Year)

A vivid account of a rollercoaster tour of duty . . . testosterone-charged, expletive-splattered (Phil Jacobson, Daily Mail)

A compelling read . . . Hennessey's book ought to be read by all officers that have yet to experience combat . . . He has written an important portrait of contemporary warfare and the nature of battle - a portrait that can claim a line of descent from Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (Will Pike, British Army Review)

An honest acknowledgment of the darkness within us, of the unwelcome emotions that combat can bring about ... Smart and funny ... The Junior Officers' Reading Club is a humdinger (Jonathan Yardley Washington Post)

Review

'Hennessey has fashioned what must rank as the most accomplished work of military witness to emerge from British war-fighting since 1945 ... He may have shed a uniform but - surely - he cannot abandon the rare gift revealed in this extraordinary book.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsHonest
By 3914 on 24 Jan. 2013
Format: Paperback
This, in my view, is an excellent book. The author has had the guts to write with total honesty even when his opinions, thoughts and actions will be unpalatable to many, particulary those who have not served in the armed forces. The books tells the story of his time at Sandhurst followed by a tour in Iraq and then Afghan. The real value in the book is not so much the story but the fact that he allows readers into his thoughts and mindset particulary with regard to his Afghan tour. That takes courage and leaves Hennessey open to criticism. Some reviewers have for example taken offense at Hennesseys total disdain for those in the rear echelon, who he states do not even need to wear camoflauge uniforms. They are missing the point. If you sat down with the author and asked him during a rational conversation if he thought those in the rear echelon did a valuable job I am certain he would state that they do. However, his book is an honest expression of his view, as a frontline soldier returning from direct combat with the enemy and of his thoughts and opinions in that context. Contempt for those in the forces that have not experienced the same intensity of fighting, or fighting of any sort is an emotion that, in my experience is not uncommon. It is however unfair, but to add caveats to his thought pattern in the context of this book would defeat the object of the book. Other reviewers have also taken offense at Hennessey's casual attitude to death and killing the enemy and to his enjoyment, to an extent, of combat. Again, he could skirted these issues but he has chosen to discuss them and to give a truthful account of his feelings at the time.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsAn honest if worrying account of the current state of fighting wars
By AK TOP 500 REVIEWER on 16 Jun. 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Patrick Hennessey reports of his time in the British Army, with tours of duty to Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands before resigning. It starts with the Sandhurst experience, and then goes into each deployment, with the lion share being dedicated to Afghanistan, where the author's real fighting took place.

The initial training in Sandhurst is probably also the only episode, where the 'reading' element is really present, with the author ruminating on Dixon's On The Psychology Of Military Incompetence (Pimlico) (a book I would highly recommend) and how the training tends to always prepare the officers (and troops) for fighting the last war, not the current, or next one. While this section of the book is insightful, the author fails to translate how the training, which he felt was largely useless, transformed him into a competent fighter / officer, which he claims to have become as a result ('when the training kicked in') - On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society does a much better job here.

While the author's time in Bosnia seems to have been spent hankering for stories one could tell fawning ex-girlfriends (which did not really materialize), and Iraq was equally disappointing for the author for the lack of action, he finally seems to have gotten his fill of firefights in Afghanistan. This part of the book is fairly quick to read but not necessarily the best.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsVery readable but really quite irritating
By R. BRUCE on 20 July 2011
Format: Paperback
Have just finished this after a whizzing through it in about 5 days while on holiday. I have very mixed feelings. It's certainly very readable and fluently written and does provide some real insight into the workings of the army. There is also something very authentic about his kinetic descriptions of combat in the second half of the book. But, boy, did I not warm to Mr Hennessy.

I presume he set out for this to be a 'searingly honest' account of his experiences, but in many cases his honesty just served to reinforce every mild and (previously un-informed) prejudice I had about Guards officers. This privately-educated Oxbridge graduate talks about how amazingly 'diverse' the intake is at Sandhurst. He goes on to describe his role in looking after his men as akin to that of a primary school teacher and slags off the officers who have made it up through the ranks (as well as numerous other regiments and other parts of the armed forces). He's quite honest about wanting to look cool in his uniform and impress the ladies, thinks having his own orderly and hanging around in the mess is great and seems utterly (and depressingly) obsessed with creating video montages of his tours - as if none of it is real until edited down into some snappy clips with thumping background music which can be used to impress people. In fact there seems to be quite a lot about wanting to impress people in here - much talk of not being allowed to wear sunglasses.

I quite liked his critique of the pointlessness of much of the training he received at Sandhurst but after his endless moaning about wanting to see some action I was expecting some real insight into the horrors of combat. Instead there are repetitive descriptions of how much 'fun' it is shoot people and be involved in a battle all of which I found slightly chilling.

So worth a read but not great. I hope Mr H has since matured considerably.
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