One of the most famous battles in history, Gallipoli forced Churchill from office, established Turkey's iconic founder Mustafa Kemal ('Ataturk') and marked Australia's emergence as a nation in its own right. It had begun as a bold move led by the British to ultimately capture Constantinople, but this definitive new history explains that from the initial landings -which ended with so much blood in the sea it could be seen from aircraft overhead -to the desperate attacks of early summer and the battle of attrition that followed, it was a lunacy that was never going to succeed.

Drawing on unpublished personal accounts by individuals at all levels and from all sides -not only from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, but unusually from Turkey and France too -Peter Hart combines his trademark eye for vivid personal stories with a strong narrative to bring a modern view of this military disaster to a popular audience.