A unique work, combining military history and travel, studying the most fought-over area on earth.

De Gaulle called it a 'fatal avenue' - that broad sweep of low-lying country stretching north east of Paris. Over the centuries, invading armies have swept back and forth over this bloody terrain, and the names of battles fought here read like a dictionary of military history - from Agincourt, Calais and Crecy to Verdun, Vimy and Ypres. "Fatal Avenue" is both a history and a guide - a unique study of a region that has witnessed more bitter military conflict than any other area of its size on earth.

Richard Holmes is Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science. He was educated at Cambridge, Northern Illinois, and Reading Universities, and carried out his doctoral research on the French army of the Second Empire. For many years he taught military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

A celebrated military historian, Richard Holmes is the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed Tommy and Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. His dozen other books include Dusty Warriors, Sahib, The Western Front, The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French, The Road to Sedan, Riding the Retreat, The Second World War in Photographs and Firing Line (also published by Pimlico).

He is general editor of The Oxford Companion to Military History and has presented eight BBC TV series, including ?War Walks?, ?The Western Front? and ?Battlefields?, and is famous for his hugely successful series ?Wellington: The Iron Duke? and ?Rebels and Redcoats?.