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Remembered Today:

Max Hastings - 'Catastrophe'


paulgranger

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Sir Max seems to pride himself on being a bombastic controversialist and knocking the performance of British units. As far as I read it, Catastrophe fitted the pattern.

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  • 3 months later...

An interesting article, but please, can we be very careful to avoid any such accusations here

Thanks

Alan

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Is Freiherr von Burstfeld trying to be offensive ?

I wasn't trying.

Please, who is the offended party ................ I read his words with great interest.

Clicking the link in the article, I assume this is he

http://wih.sagepub.com/content/9/2/159.abstract

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Someone isn't happy with Sirmax http://20committee.com/2015/03/30/plagiarism-is-not-cool/and you can see why.

I mentioned some time ago that Sir Max seems to repackage old, known information and attempts to deliver it as groundbreaking new info. Nothing I read in the book appeared new to me although I have to admit I didn't get very far with the book.. This allegation by Schindler is slightly different as the author seems to believe his research has been plagiarised. The difficulty here is that you cannot copyright a fact e.g X number of Officers died etc, even if X was calculated by someone else. Sir Max may well have done the exact same calculation using the same source. While not legally necessary it would be courteous to at least acknowledge the source of the calc. Unless the author can prove the info repeats his version verbatim he wont get very far and I suspect he is not on firm ground.

Sir Max was fairly economical when attributing quotes I seem to recall but again that is no longer a legal requirement under UK copyright law (amended last October). MG

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I mentioned some time ago that Sir Max seems to repackage old, known information and attempts to deliver it as groundbreaking new info.

Beat me to it. I'll be interested to see what, if anything, comes out of it.

Paul

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Beat me to it. I'll be interested to see what, if anything, comes out of it.

Paul

Nothing. Does anyone on the Forum really think Sir Max has any worried about what we think? He'll continue to sell books by the ton, irrespective. The people who lap up his stuff are not going to worry about our view, or that of "proper" historians of whom they have never heard.

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Have read it quite. A fair amount is a retelling of 'The Guns of August' and overall doesn't say anything new for those with a keen interest in WW1. All fronts in the opening phase of the conflict are covered. A lot of emphasis is given to the French casualties suffered.

Definitely not in 'The Black Adder' camp but does have a low opinion of Sir John French.

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Nothing. Does anyone on the Forum really think Sir Max has any worried about what we think? He'll continue to sell books by the ton, irrespective. The people who lap up his stuff are not going to worry about our view, or that of "proper" historians of whom they have never heard.

Nope, I don't think anyone was implying he would care what we on the forum think. :)

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