The Crimean War: Queen Victoria's War with the Russian Tsars [Illustrated] [Paperback]

'One of the most original and thought-provoking books on the Crimean War to date ... He has shaken the foundations of "accepted knowledge" on the war ... Particularly intriguing are his tactical alternatives and analyses of the repercussions of various command decisions.' - Lawrence W. Crider, Editor.

Hugh Small, in a masterly piece of historical detective work, convincingly demonstrates what all previous historians and biographers have overlooked - that Farr's revelation is essential to the understanding of Miss Nightingale's personality. Publicly lauded as a heroine, she now realised that her presence in Scutari had, by making it the focus of transport of the wounded back to Britain, contributed to the overcrowding that claimed so many lives. This is a compelling psychological portrait of a Very Eminent (and complex) Victorian.

Small comes at his subject from a novel and startlingly illuminating perspective. Far from debunking this great Victorian icon, however, his portrait liberates a formidable woman from dreamy angelhood, underlining her tragic heroism instead.

Small's thesis is genuinely new, and rewrites the psychofeminist claim that Nightingale collapsed in a heap back in Britain because she couldn't bear being near her dominating mother and elder sister. Small stays in the realm of psycho-biography, but gives it a stiffer spine, marrying Nightingale's slump to a set of tormenting statistics.

Only when William Farr, the government statistician, taught Florence to analyse the figures (and she was no mean mathematician) did she realise the terrible truth. Bad hygiene at Scutari in 1854-5 had killed more men than any battle ... She tried desperately to publish the truth, but was silenced by an establishment cover-up ... Hugh Small believes that a new, finer Nightingale was born in that terrible realisation, and that the campaigns she skilfully orchestrated from her sickbed were critical in the development of public health. His gripping story of Nightingale's nemesis and redemption goes a long way to rehabilitate her. She was worse than we ever thought; but she was greater too.

Small's Nightingale is driven, tormented, messianic and interesting.

This book is a revisionist narrative account of the Crimean War (1854-56). It begins by claiming that after the Crimean War the British Government kept secret the real objectives of the War and the reasons for its failure. Documents revealing the truth were released without publicity over fifty years later, by which time historians had fabricated a false account which is still widely believed today. This false history minimised the importance of the War, ascribed its outbreak to mistakes by discredited politicians, and reassured Victorian public opinion that Britain had not suffered from the indecisive outcome. There has been little interest in the Crimean War from modern academic historians; they may have been put off by the early portrayal of the war as a historically irrelevant mistake. The author believes this is why much original source material has not been consulted since it became available in the early 1900s.

THE AUTHORHugh Small is the author of Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel. He is an acknowledged expert on the war in the Crimea and has appeared on Channel 4 News, BBC2, Sky News and contributed to History Today on the subject. He lives in Central London.