The Greatest Day in History: How the Great War really ended

‘This volume sets an example that will be hard to equal’ - Daily Mail On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, after a dramatic week of negotiations and military offensives, the gunfire officially ceased. The Great War was over. The story of Armistice Day remains largely untold despite a roll call of eyewitnesses from Hitler and Charles de Gaulle to Harry Truman and Marlene Dietrich. Nicholas Best’s groundbreaking account reveals the twists and turns of the events leading up to the end of the war and presents a compelling snapshot of the whole world at the end of a truly momentous week. Praise for The Greatest Day in ‘Scintillating … a miscellany of tragedy mixed with delight’ - Literary-Review ‘A first rate work of popular history’ - Yorkshire Post ‘Remarkable … will be very hard to match’ - Western Morning News ‘An excellent history … a fully rounded picture and a fitting publication for the 90th anniversary’ - Publishing News Nicholas Best grew up in Kenya and was educated there, in England, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He served in the Grenadier Guards and worked in London as a journalist before becoming a full-time author. His many books include Happy the Story of the English in Kenya, Tennis and the Masai (a novel serialised on BBC Radio 4), and the widely praised Trafalgar. Nicholas Best was the Financial Times’s fiction critic for ten years and has written for many other publications. He lives in Cambridge.