Two powerhouse historians, Robert Lyman and Richard Dannatt join forces again for a new analysis of the Korean War
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Author Robert Lyman & Richard Dannatt | Price £25 | Released 22 May 2025
Reviewer Tobias Clark
Korea remains at war with itself, split straight across the middle by the 38th parallel. In the north of the Korean Peninsula is the closed, totalitarian nation of North Korea and in the south the complete opposite: South Korea boasts a thriving capitalist manufacturing and consumer economy. Peace between the two is fragile – the authors of this new book make that clear from the introduction – with border guards along the 38th parallel routinely firing ‘warning shots’ at one another.
To explain the distrust and animosity between the two countries, former British Army soldiers and established historians Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman look to the Korean War, fought from summer 1950 to summer 1953, writing a military history of the conflict with one eye on the present day.
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The authors blame the war on Kim Il-sung, dictator of North Korea, who led the North Korean invasion of South Korea because, like Adolf Hitler with the Sudetenland in 1938 and Vladimir Putin with Ukraine in 2022, he believed he had carte blanche. In another nod to the present, the Chinese Communist Party, which gained control of China in 1949 just before the outset of the Korean War, is shown as a dangerous presence.
Lyman has written many acclaimed history books, the pick of which is the superb A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain 1941–45, about the Pacific Theatre in the Second World War. Dannatt was Chief of the General Staff in Great Britain, championing the British Army in a world that was rapidly changing, and just after retiring from that role he wrote Boots on the Ground: Britain and Her Army since 1945, a passionate defence of ground forces in modern warfare. Had attention been paid then, perhaps the British Army would be better placed now to face the threats in Europe.
Much is made of the importance of the United States and its role in leading the fightback against the illegal invasion of South Korea, and rightly so. Korea: War Without End is no different, lauding the US as honourable to stand up to aggression and use the United Nations to punish the aggressor. But it’s the South and North Korean people, the Australians and, by extension, modern-day Taiwanese who stand out in this book. It’s impossible not to feel sympathy for the people who then and now remain at risk from further conflict in the region.
There are some downsides to this otherwise excellent book. The unmistakable scent of the hawk pervades it: conscription and the British Army Reserve are lauded, which seems gratuitous as the reader already perceives the Korean War as right and honourable.
Despite the tragedy of the war never being absent from the pages, you get the sense that soldiers wrote this book. In addition, a few more illustrative maps would not have gone amiss to help aid those less familiar with the ground. Ultimately though Dannatt and Lyman have produced a brilliant military history which does justice to this complex and misunderstood war.
– Tobias Clark
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