The Changing of the Guard

The Changing of the Guard by Simon Akam is a revelatory, explosive new analysis of the British military today.

Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Britain has changed enormously. During this time, the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither war achieved its objectives. This book questions why and provides challenging but necessary answers.

Composed of assiduous documentary research, field reportage, and hundreds of interviews with many soldiers and officers who served, as well as the politicians who directed them, the allies who accompanied them, and the family members who loved and—on occasion—lost them, it offers a strikingly rich, nuanced portrait of one of Britain's pivotal national institutions in a time of great stress.

Award-winning journalist Simon Akam, who spent a year in the army when he was 18, returned a decade later to see how the institution had changed. His book examines the relevance of the armed forces today—their social, economic, political, and cultural role. This is as much a book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.

'Akam's beautifully written, from the inside out, account of the British Army's reluctance to engage with the realities of recent small wars, in Afghanistan in particular, is a must-read for every serious student of modern military history. At one level, it explains how and why we managed to turn victory over Al Qaeda in Afghanistan into defeat at the hands of the Taliban. But this book is about much more than the army in Afghanistan—it is a parable about failure, the failure of a revered institution, with a proud history and an uncritical public, to come to terms with a changed and changing world.'
—Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, former British ambassador to Afghanistan

'Simon Akam has written a perceptive, challenging and passionate book that looks at modern soldiering. In doing so, Akam provides an invaluable look at how the British Army works—and how the changing world in the 21st century is asking new and complex questions for soldiers and military strategy alike.'
—Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

'This brave, absorbing and prodigiously well-researched tour de force renders every previous account of the British Army in its disastrous recent campaigns obsolete. Akam makes an unanswerable case that we are no longer very good at fighting wars, building his arguments with panache and good sense. In doing so he has done his country, and the army, a great service—although the Generals may not see it quite that way just yet. Put away the self-serving autobiographies and the obsequious histories of in-house academics; this is the definitive account of the British Army in its 21st Century misadventures.'
—Frank Ledwidge, author of Losing Small Wars