The Reason Why

This history is a war story of astonishing courage and honor, of stupidity, of blood, death, agony -- and waste.

Nothing in British campaign history has ever equaled the tragic farce that was the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War's Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854. In this fascinating study, Cecil Woodham-Smith shows that responsibility for the fatal mismanagement of the affair rested with the Earls of Cardigan and Lucan, brothers-in-law and sworn enemies for more than thirty years.

In revealing the combination of pride and obstinacy that was to prove so fatal, Woodham-Smith gives us a picture of a vanished world, in which heroism and military glory guaranteed an immortality impossible in a more cynical age.Cecil Blanche Woodman-Smith was a British historian and author of popular history books on the Victorian era, including The Great Hunger, Queen Victoria, The Reason Why, and Thin Men of Hadda. She was appointed CBE in 1960, and received honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland and the University of St. Andrews. She died in 1977.