{"title":"Patrick Hennessey","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the sharp and insightful world of Patrick Hennessey. His military memoir, \"Junior Officer's Reading Club,\" offers a candid look at modern conflict and the lives of young soldiers. A must-read for those seeking authentic perspectives.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"junior-officers-reading-club-book-patrick-hennessey-9781846141867","title":"The Junior Officers' Reading Club","description":"For the first time in a generation British soldiers are once again fighting at close quarters, coming under sustained and vicious firepower, losing friends in some of the most violent fighting the modern army has endured. Yet the same soldiers also serve on international peacekeeping missions, or counter insurgency. Sometimes they do all three in the same country.   The Junior Officers' Reading Club is the story of how one of these soldiers was made, through the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst, into the war-pockmarked, gritty Balkans, out into the nightmare of Iraq and Afghanistan's Helmand Province, pinned down by the Taliban, living only from moment to moment. Written in spare and lucid prose, it describes with alarming vividness not only the frenetic violence of a soldier's life, but the periods of stifling and (sometimes) comic boredom, living inside an institution in a state of flux, an Army caught between a world that needs it and a society that no longer understands it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49512234123537,"sku":"GOR001858856","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49515652677905,"sku":"GOR001400275","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49971912343825,"sku":"GOR010550968","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50263674224913,"sku":"CIN1846141869VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50401210663185,"sku":"CIN1846141869G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51513405800721,"sku":"GOR003294219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1846141869.jpg?v=1751122301"},{"product_id":"kandak-book-patrick-hennessey-9781846144059","title":"KANDAK","description":"From the author of the top ten bestseller The Junior Officers' Reading Club.   When Patrick Hennessey returned home from Afghanistan, battle-worn, exhilarated, unsure if he'd see anything like it in his life again, he left behind him bands of friendship forged in the heat of the moment between living and dying. The comrades he left furthest behind were Qiam, Syed and Majhib. They are still there in the dust and heat of Helmand, soldiers fighting for their homeland.    KANDAK is the story of how these lasting bonds were made. Written in the spare and lucid prose of Junior Officers' Reading Club, Patrick Hennessey tells of their comically bad first meetings, the mutual suspicion, incomprehension and cultural divides that characterise early interactions between British and Afghan soldiers, to the moments under fire when those divides can, sometimes, cross chaos and culture shocks to turn into brotherhood. An account of friendship and loss, of warriors and soldiers, KANDAK explores the reasons men pick up the sword, and how in the intensity of battle, unlikely alliances can be formed.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49515907481873,"sku":"GOR004048591","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49659708145937,"sku":"GOR005144978","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1846144051.jpg?v=1751280717"},{"product_id":"junior-officers-reading-club-book-patrick-hennessey-9781594484797","title":"The Junior Officers' Reading Club","description":"Hailed as a classic of war writing in the U.K., \u003ci\u003eThe Junior Officers' Reading Club\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelatory first-hand account of a young enlistee's profound coming of age. Attempting to stave off the tedium and pressures of army life in the Iraqi desert by losing themselves in the dusty paperbacks on the transit-camp bookshelves, Hennessey and a handful of his pals from military academy form the Junior Officers' Reading Club. By the time he reaches Afghanistan and the rest of the club are scattered across the Middle East, they are no longer cheerfully overconfident young recruits, hungering for action and glory. Hennessey captures how boys grow into men amid the frenetic, sometimes exhilarating violence, frequent boredom, and almost overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier's experience and the way we fight today. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWatch a Video\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49538821390609,"sku":"GOR003008535","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564392390929,"sku":"GOR010727567","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652775420177,"sku":"GOR004446966","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50383889301777,"sku":"CIN1594484791G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53384691056913,"sku":"CIN1594484791A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53448683094289,"sku":"CIN1594484791VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1594484791.jpg?v=1750719934"},{"product_id":"the-junior-officers-reading-club-killing-time-and-fighting-wars-book-patrick-hennessey-9781846143298","title":"The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49556694728977,"sku":"GOR001350851","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1846143292.jpg?v=1751379687"},{"product_id":"kandak-book-patrick-hennessey-9780241951279","title":"KANDAK","description":"When the author returned home from Afghanistan, he left behind him surreal intensity and exhilaration of battle. He also left behind lasting bonds of friendship formed with his Afghan comrades Qiam, Syed and Majhib. This title tells of their first meetings, mutual suspicion and incomprehension, and how this eventually turned into brotherhood.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49557088895249,"sku":"GOR005601724","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347091230993,"sku":"CIN0241951275G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50697008316689,"sku":"NGR9780241951279","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51329285095697,"sku":"CIN0241951275VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51502606450961,"sku":"GOR010549051","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53254939967761,"sku":"GOR005868758","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0241951275.jpg?v=1751427309"},{"product_id":"junior-officers-reading-club-book-patrick-hennessey-9780141039268","title":"The Junior Officers' Reading Club","description":"Patrick Hennessey's The Junior Officers' Reading Club is a lucid, witty account of all the horror, boredom and exhilaration of war.    Patrick Hennessey is pretty much like any other member of Generation X: he spent the first half of the noughties reading books at university, going out, listening to house music and watching war films. He also, as an officer in the Grenadier guards, fought in some of the most violent combat the British army has seen in decades.    Telling the story of how a modern soldier is made, from the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst to the nightmare of Iraq and Afghanistan, The Junior Officers' Reading Club is already being hailed as a modern classic.    'Soldiers who can write are as rare as writers who can strip down a machinegun in 40 seconds' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times    'An extraordinary memoir ... Hennessey has a reporter's eye for detail and a soldier's nose for bullshit' John Shirley, Guardian    'High tempo, full-on, honest and revealing' Patrick Bishop, Evening Standard    'The most accomplished work of military witness to emerge from British war-fighting since 1945' Boyd Tonkin, Independent     'Remarkable ... conveys vividly what it's like to experience combat' Jeremy Paxman, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year    Patrick Hennessey (b. 1982) joined the Army in January 2004, undertaking officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where he was awarded the Queen's Medal and commissioned into The Grenadier Guards. He served as a Platoon Commander and later Company Operations Officer from the end of 2004 to early 2009 in the Balkans, Africa, South East Asia and the Falkland Islands and on operational tours to Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2007, where he became the youngest Captain in the Army and was commended for gallantry.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49560406884625,"sku":"GOR001900044","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49647078310161,"sku":"GOR002123438","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49726972657937,"sku":"NGR9780141039268","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345506177297,"sku":"CIN0141039264G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50975610765585,"sku":"GOR010540740","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52430073331985,"sku":"NLS9780141039268","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0141039264.jpg?v=1750694493"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-patrick-hennessey.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}