Tim Marshall bring a unique view of the Kosovo war following the breakup of Yugoslavia
I was at university when the breakup of Yugoslavia occured… and it was a brutal affair. In his book Shadowplay Tim Marshall brings us a journalistic view of the War in Kosovo which occured at the end of the overall conflict.
From the Book
The shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that, after nearly 50 years of peace, war could return to Europe. It came to its bloody conclusion in Kosovo in 1999.
Tim Marshall, then diplomatic editor at Sky News, was on the ground covering the Kosovo War. This is his illuminating account of how events unfolded, a thrilling journalistic memoir drawing on personal experience, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with intelligence officials from five countries.
Twenty years on from the war’s end, with the rise of Russian power, a weakened NATO and stalled EU expansion, this story is more relevant than ever, as questions remain about the possibility of conflict on European soil. Utterly gripping, this is Tim Marshall at his very best: behind the lines, under fire and full of the insight that has made him one of Britain’s foremost writers on geopolitics.
Review
Before I begin just a note on this book – despite the cover this is only about the Serbia attacks on Kosovo and not the wider Yugoslav war… The cover is misleading which is unfortunate, but the description on the back is very clear.
This is also a story by a journalist who was there – Tim Marshall. It is not a step by step guide through the conflict, with troop movements, sorties flown, attacks made and defeated. It is about Marshall’s personal experiences and the experiences of those he interviewed. And of course the story of the main political and military leaders of the time.
It’s always a worry when the history I am reading was history I lived through – from the very safe distance of student halls at university. But none-the-less I have broken into the near past to understand more about the war in Kosovo – upsettingly no longer the ‘Europe’s Last War’.
Tim Marhsall is a very good writer, and that comes through throughout this book. His ability to go from large scale, worldwide events and bring in ordinary people and soldiers is brilliant. There is a lot of humanity in here and human emotion – something which is often lacking in purely factual accounts of conflict.
This does mean that he misses some of the detail that you would expect form a book purely about the Kosovo war. But that is definitely not a bad thing.
As with any human story of war, this is also harrowing – and reminds us how close we can be to ‘War in Europe’. And the importance of learning about war so as to learn that it is not a good thing and is to be avoided – although whilst carrying a large alliance with you for protection.
Verdict
Another very interesting book from Tim Marshall, and one I have no hesitation in recommending. As mentioned throughout, it won’t give details of every military engagement but it does provide a feel of what the war was like… and what being in a war means for the innocent population caught in the middle of it.
Harrowing of course, but a good source of information on the conflict.
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