Rachel Billington’s latest novel appears 100 years after the disastrous eight-month Gallipoli campaign against the Turks was launched. The huge loss of life included Billington’s own grandfather, and the campaign ended in withdrawal with very little achieved except for the individual bravery and glory of some. Billington takes four principal characters to tell her story: two young British officers, a private, and Sylvia, an aristocratic young girl who is engaged to one of the officers. As well as descriptions of the peninsula itself, of its geography and fierce weather, of its spectacu­lar scenery and wild flowers, we are not spared the appalling conditions and suffering of the mass of soldiers. Their manner of living, like animals in filthy burrows, their lack of ammuniti