On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. A little over a month later the world was engulfed in the bloodiest conflict mankind had ever seen. How did such tragedy unfold so quickly?

In July 1914 award-winning historian Sean McMeekin tells the incredible story of Europe’s countdown to war, as seen through the eyes of the men who, even at the distance of a century, still seem larger than life.

We meet the Archduke Ferdinand, brooding heir to the Habsburg throne and fanatical Bosnian Serb assassins who plot to murder him as well as Conrad and Berchtold, the Austrians who seek to exploit the outrage. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Bethmann Hollweg recklessly urged on the Austrians and Sergei Sazonov, Tsarist Russian Foreign Minister, was trying to live down a reputation for cowardice. Poincaré and Paléologue were two French statesmen who urge on the Russians and help Sazonov overcome his fears; and Winston Churchill, who, alone among Cabinet officials in London, perceives the seriousness of the situation in time to take action.

It is not true that, as many popular historians have told us, ‘no one wanted the war.’ 1914 was no accident of fate. Individual statesmen, pursuing real objectives, conjured up the conflict – in some cases by conscious intention. While some sought honourably to defuse tensions, others all but oozed with malice as they rigged the decks for war.

In this groundbreaking and powerful work of popular history Sean McMeekin makes clear as never before who was responsible for the catastrophe.

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