Robert Cowley: the Killing Season

Robert Cowley's THE KILLING SEASON is the story of the autumn of 1914, and of what happened after the Battle of the Marne.

More men died in the first four months of the Great War on the Western Front than in any comparable interval in the four-year struggle.

By the end of the year, French combat deaths alone totaled 301,100, roughly one Frenchman killed every forty-three seconds.

The British suffered close to 60,000 casualties, about half the number of men who served on the Continent that fall.

Their professional army had practically ceased to exist.

We will never know many men Germany lost.

Those autumn months have been long overlooked and forgotten, often dismissed by military historians as being unimportant.

In conversation with Georgina Godwin, Cowley will discuss why they are anything but.

The so-called "Race to the Sea" ended in what might aptly be called a dead heat and the trench stalemate for which World War I is famous resulted.

The great battle now known as the First Battle of Ypres was a final German attempt to prevent it.

Cowley regards the events that led up to that stalemate as having an importance that has gone too long unrecognized.

He sees them as the true beginning of modern warfare, nothing less than the inauguration of a military revolution." In conversation with Georgina Godwin