The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

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What to expect

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Patrick Hennessey’s compelling account of life as a British soldier, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, read with charm and wit by the author himself.

Patrick Hennessey is a graduate in his 20s. He reads Graham Greene, listens to early-90s house on his iPod and watches Vietnam movies. He has also, as an officer in the Grenadier Guards, fought in some of the most violent combat the British army has seen in a generation.

This is the story of how a modern soldier is made, from the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst to the nightmare of Iraq and Afghanistan. Showing war in all its terror, boredom and exhilaration, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club is already being hailed as a modern classic.

Critics Review

  • Must rank as the most accomplished work of military witness to emerge from British war-fighting since 1945

    Independent

  • Outstanding . . . A classic of its kind

    William Boyd, Books of the Year, Herald

  • An extraordinary memoir . . . Hennessey has a reporter’s eye for detail and a soldier’s nose for bullshitAn extraordinary memoir . . . Hennessey has a reporter’s eye for detail and a soldier’s nose for bullshit

    Guardian

  • All politicians need to read honest accounts of war – at no time more than now – and Patrick Hennessey’s The Junior Officers’ Reading Club is one of the very best

    David Cameron, Books of the Year, Observer

  • The military memoir of the moment

    Times

  • A very fine book, a powerful dispatch from the front line … what impresses is the sheer candour and immediacy

    Spectator

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