Professor William Philpott

Major Publications

Books

  • Attrition: Fighting the First Word War (Little, Brown, 2014). US edition, War of Attrition (Overlook, 2014), a Wall St Journal book of the year.
  • Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century. (Little, Brown, July 2009). Winner of the Society for Army Historical Research’s Templer Prize, 2010 & US Western Front Association Norman B. Tomlinson Junior book prize, 2009. Abridged US edition, Three Armies on the Somme: The First Battle of the Twentieth Century(Alfred Knopf, 2010).
  • Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Macmillan, 1996).
  • Anglo-French Defence Relations Between the Wars, (eds) W.J. Philpott & M. S. Alexander (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
  • The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the First World War, with Matthew Hughes (Palgrave Macmillan 2005).
  • Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History (ed.) with Matthew Hughes (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2006).

Journal Articles

  • ‘Military History a Century after the Great War’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, Special edition, ‘Revisiting the Great War’, XX/1 (2015: online publication).
  • ‘The Making of the Military Entente, 1904–1914: France, the British Army, and the Prospect of War’, The English Historical Review CXXVII (2013), pp. 1155–85.
  • ‘France’s Forgotten Victory’, review article, Journal of Strategic Studies,34 (2011), pp. 901–18.
  • ‘The French and the British Field Force: Moral Support or Material Contribution?’ (With Prof M.S. Alexander), The Journal of Military History, 71 (2007), pp. 743–72. Moncado prize winner.
  • ‘The Anglo-French Victory on the Somme’, Diplomacy and Statecraft special edition, ‘Anglo-French Relations from the late 18th to the late 20th Century’, 17, (2006), pp. 731–751.
  • ‘Gone Fishing? Sir John French’s Meeting with General Lanrezac in August 1914’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, LXXXIV/339 (Autumn 2006), pp. 254–59.
  • ‘The Big Push: l’armée Britannique sur la Somme’, in Revue Historique des Armées, 242 (2006), pp. 70–83.
  • ‘Why the British were Really on the Somme: A Reply to Elizabeth Greenhalgh’, for War in History, September 2002, pp. 446–471, reprinted in World War I, ed. M. Neiberg (Franham: Ashgate, The International Library of Essays on Military History, 2005).
  • ‘Squaring the Circle: The Co-ordination of the Entente in the Winter of 1915/16’, English Historical Review, September 1999, pp. 875–898.
  • ‘The Origins and Significance of Britain’s Northern Flank Strategy’ (Origines et Signification de la Stratégie Britannique du Flanc Nord), Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains (special edition: L'Alliance Franco-Britannique Pendant la Grande Guerre), October 1995, pp. 47–63.
  • ‘Britain and France go to War: Anglo-French Relations on the Western Front’, War in History, January 1995, pp. 43–64.
  • ‘Kitchener and the 29th Division; A Study in Anglo-French Strategic Relations, 1914–1915’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, September 1993, pp. 375–407.
  • ‘“One Had to Stiffen One's Upper Lip”: The Royal Navy and the Battle of Puerto Plata’, The Mariner's Mirror, February 1993, pp. 64–70.
  • ‘The Strategic Ideas of Sir John French’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, December 1989, pp. 458–478.

Book chapters

  • ‘Attrition: How the War was Fought and Won’, in The Greater War: Other Combatants and Other Fronts, 1914–1918 ed. Jonathan Krause (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ISBN 978-0-3338-0394-3), pp. 235–54.
  • ‘Unequal Sacrifice? Two Armies, Two Wars?’ in Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, ed. R. Tombs & E. Chabal (London: Bloomsbury, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4411-6933-4), pp. 47–61.
  • ‘Managing the British Way of Warfare: France and Britain’s Continental Commitment, 1904–1918’, in The British Way in Warfare: Power and the International System, 1856–1956, ed. G. Kennedy and K. Neilsen (Farnham: Ashgage, 2010), pp. 83–100.
  • ‘The Reputation of Foch in Great Britain’, in Ferdinand Foch: Apprenez à Penser, ed. R. Porte & F. Cochet (Paris: SOTECA Éditions 14–18, 2010)
  • ‘En reconnaissance des héros populaires: Les hauts décorations britanniques dans la grande guerre’, in R. Porte (ed.), 90e anniversaire de la Croix de Guerre (Vincennes: Service Historique de la Défense, 2006, ISBN 2-11-095776-10), pp. 51–58.
  • ‘Winning the War: Kitchener and Foch’, in Cross Channel Currents:100 Years of the Entente Cordiale, ed. R. Tombs, R. Mayne and D. Johnson (Routledge, for the Franco-British Council, 2004), pp. 54–61.
  • ‘Government, Military and Empire in Britain, 1860-1890’, in Das Militär und der Aufbruch in die Moderne, 1860–1890 [The Military and their Response to the Modern Age] ed. M. Epkenhaus & G.P. Groß (Oldenbourg, 2003), pp. 21–41.
  • ‘The General Staff and the Paradoxes of Continental War’, in The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890–1939, ed. D. French and B. Holden Reid (Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 95–111. Winner of the Society for Army Historical Research’s 2002 Templer Medal for British Military History.
  • ‘The Supreme War Council and the Allied War Effort’, in Anglo-French Relations, 1898–1998: From Fashoda to Jospin, ed. P. Chassaigne and M.L. Dockrill (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 109–24.
  • ‘Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Allied Victory’, in Leadership in Conflict, 1914–1918, ed. M. Seligman and M. Hughes (Leo Cooper, 2000), pp. 38–53.
  • ‘Coalition War: Britain and France’, in The Great World War 1914–45: Vol. 1, Lightning Strikes Twice, ed. P. Liddle, J. Bourne and I. Whitehead(Harper Collins, 2000), pp. 479–91.
  • ‘Britain, France and the Belgian Army’, in Look to Your Front: Essays on the First World War Prepared by the British Commission for Military History, ed. B.J. Bond (Spellmount, 1999), pp. 121–136.
  • ‘Haig and Britain’s European Allies’, in Sir Douglas Haig: Seventy Years On, ed. B.J. Bond and N. Cave (Leo Cooper, 1999), pp. 128–144.
  • ‘The Entente Cordiale and the Next War: Anglo-French Views on Future Military Cooperation, 1928–40’, (with M. Alexander) in Knowing Your Friends: Intelligence Inside Alliances and Coalitions from 1914 to the Cold War, ed. M. Alexander (Frank Cass, 1998), pp. 53–84. Also published in The Journal of Intelligence and National Security, spring 1998.
  • ‘The Campaign for a Ministry of Defence Between the Wars’, pp. 109–154, and (with E. Feuchtwanger) ‘Civil-Military Relations in a Period Without Major Wars, 1855–85’, pp. 1–20, in Government and the Armed Forces in Britain, 1856–1990, ed. P. Smith, (Hambledon Press, 1996).