The allied expeditionary force landed on the beaches of Calamita Bay, on the south-west coast of the Crimean Peninsula, in September 1854. The campaign that followed would create such iconic figures as the nurses Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, and iconic images such as the Thin Red Line of the 93rd Highlanders at the Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Reporting it all was William Howard Russell, special correspondent of The Times. Russell’s articles, transmitted back to Britain by electric telegraph, shocked the public and made him world famous. This book reprints Russell’s vivid accounts of the battlefields of the Alma, Sevastopol, Balaclava and Inkerman.