William Howard Russell is the journalist widely regarded as the father of modern war reporting, which began with his remarkable dispatches from the Crimean war in 1854.
The "vulgar, low Irishman", as one soldier called him, won lasting fame for revealing the poor medical facilities for wounded troops and for his report about the charge of the light brigade during the battle of Balaclava.
Now a new book, Battles of the Crimean War*, has gathered together all of Russell's reports from the frontline in the conflict fought between Britain, France and Turkey on one side and Russia on the other.
Here are the opening sentences to Russell's report on the charge against Russian guns by 600 British cavalry:
"They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame.
The flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. In diminished ranks, with a halo of steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries."
As The Times's writer, Robbie Millen, notes in his book review: "This extraordinary moment of bravery and bungling would not have fixed itself in the British public's imagination had it not been for Russell."
Its publication was followed within six weeks by the poem by Alfred Tennyson, which began:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Russell and his editor, John Delane, were heavily criticised by the government, and Queen Victoria, for the Crimean dispatches. But, pun only slightly intended, they stuck to their guns. Result: the government fell and The Times did not.
Millen rightly thinks the book "would have been improved with maps, a foreword or footnotes to give context and underscore the importance of Russell in exposing the incompetent conduct of this war."
That said, it should be on every journalist's bookshelf. Sadly, a Kindle version doesn't appear to be available.
*Battles of the Crimean War, William H Russell (Amberley, £8.99)
