Television, radio and the internet send the news spinning across continents within seconds. The assassination of John F Kennedy, the September 11 attacks and the Moon landings are just some of those events.

In this splendid new book, Nicholas Best makes a convincing argument that the first of these truly global news events came at 11am on November 11, 1918, when the First World War finally came to a close.

As the clock struck 11, a wave of relief washed out from the Western Front across the world's time zones. Virtually no country had been untouched by the conflict, which had claimed the lives of 8.5 million soldiers, wounded 21 million more and left millions of civilians dead, injured or dispossessed in the wreckage of Europe.

Best has written a first-rate work of popular history, which skilfully evokes the relief that the Armistice brought by focussing in detail on the few days leading up to it. This is a complex story, with many strands, but Best weaves them together in masterly fashion into a vivid, pacy narrative.

In the closing months of the war, the western Allies finally had Germany on the run.

The Royal Navy's blockade of Germany had starved its war machine of the raw materials it needed, there was widespread hatred of the Kaiser amongst his subjects, and the whiff of revolution was in the air.

But the process of securing peace was proving tortuous. There were powerful voices among the Allies arguing that no negotiations should happen until Germany was finally crushed.

Best's snapshot approach takes in what was going on in the trenches as well as in London, Washington and Berlin.

He also presses home the point that many of those who would shape the world in the years ahead were caught up in the final, dizzying days, among them Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and, in a military hospital recovering after being temporarily blinded in a gas attack, a corporal named Adolf Hitler.

Best is also excellent in evoking the widespread sense of unease about the terms of the Armistice. Germany was left crippled, resentful and unable to sustain strong democratic government, so paving the way for the Nazis.

There were plenty of people who foresaw the risks, among them H Rider Haggard, who noted in his diary: "They have been beaten by England and they will live and die to smash England – she will never have a more deadly enemy than the new Germany."

There is likely to be a flood of books this year commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Armistice, but Nicholas Best's will take some beating.


Nicholas Best
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £20