Description

‘Ambitious, wide-ranging and learned’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Vivid and extraordinary’ Wall Street Journal

From Boudicca to Ukraine, battlefields have always contained a surprising number of female fighters. We have all heard of Joan of Arc, but not the cross-dressing soldiers whose disguises were so effective the men around them never realized who they were fighting with.

Forgotten Warriors shines a light on women in war, from the Mino,the all-female army the protected Dahomey from the West for two hundred years, to the Night Witches, Soviet flying aces that decimated the Nazis. Against a backdrop of sieges and desperate battles, rebellions and civil wars, Sarah Percy brings these extraordinary women to life, and sets the record straight.

‘Vulnerability, strength and defiance . . . in exploring the history of women in combat, Forgotten Warriors tackles their exclusion from the historical record’ The Spectator, Books of the Year

‘Fascinating’ BBC History

‘Magnificent . . . could not be more timely’ The Monthly

‘Truly impressive and rigorously researched, this book should be in all libraries’ New York Journal of Books

Publisher Review

‘The individual tales of women who took up arms on the battlefield – and there are many – bring great life and colour to the page . . . An important contribution to the field of military history’ * The Times * Ambitious, wide-ranging and learned * TLS * Outstanding . . . Percy’s text is hard-hitting, and evidence-based * Wavell Reviews * Truly impressive and rigorously researched, this is a book that should be included in all libraries * New York Journal of Books * Fascinating . . . in evidencing women’s long military service, Percy combats . . . the final exclusion – from the historial record * BBC History Magazine * Most people have heard of Boudicca and Joan of Arc. But as this brilliant, perspective-shattering book shows, the contributions of myriad other women who have fought on the frontlines of conflict over the past 2,000 years have routinely been suppressed * Bookseller * Magnificently researched, Forgotten Warriors opens up and heightens intellectual landscapes . . . it could not be more timely * The Monthly Magazine * Lively and vivid * Wall Street Journal *