<p>7.29 a.m., 1^st July 1916. North of the River Somme the young men of two armies wait to go 'over the top'.</p><p>For Britain it was the costliest day in its Army's history - 58,000 dead, wounded and missing. For France, it was a relative stroll as they took every objective within a few hours.</p><p>In two volumes, <em>The Long Road to the Somme</em> seeks to explore, understand and, possibly, explain such dramatically different outcomes. </p><p>It looks at previous wars - the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, the Second Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War 1904-5, and the First Balkan War 1912-3 - to see what lessons were learnt and what was ignored.</p><p>It looks at politics and society, at education and training, at strategies and tactics, at how the public were conditioned to accept war as inevitable - and at the prescient men who, unlike the military commanders, accurately forecast the way in which The Great War would be fought.</p><p><em>Volume I - Episodes</em> - covers the period from 1870 to December 1915.</p><p><em>Volume II - Planning the Big Push</em> - explores the development of the Somme plan, the impact of Verdun, and the great differences in tactics employed by the two Armies on 1^st July.</p><p><br></p>