The Changing of the Guard

Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Britain has, most of its inhabitants would agree, changed enormously as a country. During that time the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at enormous financial and considerable human cost. Neither of those wars achieved its objectives. This book questions – systematically and comprehensively – whether the British military fought the wars it found itself fighting, rather than those it had prepared for.

The Changing of the Guard examines how the British Army faced the challenges of twenty-first century warfare. Necessarily the book spends much of its time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it interrogates many of the decisions, strategies and initiatives undertaken in those two asymmetrical conflicts. But its canvas is wider, from grim barracks in Germany to vast prairie training areas in Canada, to reflections of the army in popular culture, stage and film. It is as much as book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.

Composed of assiduous documentary research, field reportage and hundreds of compellingly frank, astute and revealing interviews with many soldiers and officers who served, as well as the politicians who directed them, the allies who accompanied them, and the family members who loved and – on occasion – lost them, it constitutes a strikingly rich, nuanced composite portrait of one of our pivotal national institutions in a time of great stress.

Simon Akam examines the relevance of the armed forces in today’s Britain, their social, economic, political and cultural role – and asks what the army can offer a new generation. How and why should any young Briton now ‘go for a soldier’?