Frederick The Great

Frederick committed immense amounts to paper throughout his life - letters to his friends and family across Prussia and the whole of Europe, orders to his generals, reflective memoranda to himself in which he tried to work out the nature of the situations he faced, and his more formal Political Testaments. On all these Fraser has drawn in detail and to great effect, demonstrating the extraordinary range of Frederick's achievement. It is Frederick's life as a soldier which is at the centre of the book. But war is never seen in isolation: the book summarises the complex diplomatic and strategic situations of eighteenth-century Europe with concision and elegance, so the reader fully understands the ever-shifting balance of diplomatic and military forces, and what was going on in Frederick's mind in reaction to them. Above all Fraser allows us to appreciate the unending weariness of the European war which began with Frederick's invasion of Silesia in 1740. This book is a marvellously satisfying and engrossing historical biography.