The military odyssey of the title comprises accounts of visits to about 50 of the principal author’s favourite military museums (it is not clear the degree to which his sidekick had any say in the matter – Trueman's role seems largely confined to providing the other voice in the Derek and Clive-style dialogues which appear at intervals throughout the book). After a rather rambling introduction, the subsequent chapters provide a region-by-region account starting in the authors’ native north-east and moving anticlockwise around Britain.
At each stop the author selects a key story to tell and usually a key object from the collection. The stories are well selected and well told – this is very much the best aspect of the book and unsurprising given the main author’s career as a living history interpreter. For those readers with an interest in military history many of the stories will be very familiar, for example the account of Sergeant Charles Ewart’s actions at Waterloo are recounted as part of the visit to the Scots Dragoon Guards museum in Edinburgh Castle. To the author’s credit he includes a number of less well known (and less regimentally focused) stories such as that of the thousands of women who, during the First World War, worked at the vast factory at Eastriggs producing cordite (memorably named the ‘devil’s porridge’ by Conan Doyle).
The text is supported by 16 pages of photographs loosely related to the sites visited and objects selected. They include a photograph of the authors in a Fox armoured car owned by Trueman. There is a gazetteer of the sites, arranged by region, with sufficient details to allow the reader to make their own odyssey should they wish.
So, does the book work? I would say that it does within the parameters it sets itself. But these are parameters set by someone who is keen on dressing up and telling stories and there is a tendency to raise interesting, but more difficult, points and then shy away from them. One such is raised in the introduction under the sub-title Why Museums Matter. The argument is made that we are a product of our heritage and that military heritage is a big part of that. The case of the ill-fated Durham Light Infantry Museum, which was closed by Durham County Council in 2016 as a cost-cutting measure, is cited as an example of the degree to which a military museum can be embedded in and reflect an entire community. Unfortunately, the narrative then swerves back to storytelling and anecdote resolutely ignoring thereafter the question of who military museums are for.
This is a highly personal account (we learn perhaps more than we might want to about the authors childhood reading habits and favourite war films) which tells selected stories very well. If that’s the sort of thing you like this book is for you. If on the other hand you want something a bit more insightful about military museology (or you have heard the stories before), it probably isn’t.