The attack on that narrow and crucial seaway, the Dardanelles, was a British and French attempt in 1915 to open a new fighting front on the border of Europe and Asia. Initiated nearly nine months after World War I began, it was intended to ease the deadlock on the Western Front, where two long and strong lines of trenches faced each other – German soldiers and artillery on one side, French and British on the other.

In Prior’s opinion, the Dardanelles, or Gallipoli, campaign was virtually doomed from the start. Even before the first guns boomed, the Turks – the latest allies of Germany – commanded the shores of the Dardanelles, both the European and the Asian. The Turks were ready to repel any Allied attack. Moreover, the geography of hills and straits favoured them on land and sea, and their forts were likely to resist the British and French ships that arrived. A vital part of the book is Prior’s description of the outdated British naval armament: his mission is less to recreate the past, which he depicts with a frugal paintbrush, than to destroy what he sees as false interpretations of history, especially those currently favoured by Australian writers in this phase of nationalism. It is not usually evident which historians he is against, but we are told they exist in big numbers. At times they are a pack: sometimes they fill a whole raft.

Prior gives fascinating accounts of what he sees as mistakes at or around Gallipoli. Many are well known, but he makes them seem even more blundering than is commonly realised. He notes how strong were the Turkish forts on both sides of the Dardanelles, with 111 big guns on the Gallipoli side of the narrow straits, and 121 on the Asian side. In contrast, the guns of the older British warships that were intended to storm these straits and silence the Turkish forts were not efficient. He concludes that the warships had little chance of ever passing the Turkish forts and minefields and, finally, capturing Constantinople. Even so, some of the British planners were astonishingly confident of a quick victory. At a British War Council meeting in London, in March 1915, the secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, was working out what peace terms should be imposed on Turkey even before the fighting had begun.

The landing of troops on the Gallipoli peninsula was intended to support the naval attack. Prior re-fights that war, noting the obstacles faced by the invaders, not least the gorse and other sharp bushes cloaking the steep terrain. He does not put much weight on the familiar argument that the first Anzac soldiers were sent ashore at the wrong place. He also explains that the morale of the Turkish soldiers was more resolute than had been anticipated and that the Turkish government, which was expected to collapse in the face of any setback, proved to be relatively sound. Chapter seven, entitled ‘Bodies Everywhere’, argues that the first landing at Helles succeeded only because of the sheer weight of numbers of British troops. Prior’s detailed chapters on the fighting and tactics, especially at Sari Bair and Suvla Bay, are devastating indictments of the Allied leaders.

He awards marks to the various generals, but not as many marks go to Mustapha Kemal as the Turks would like him to receive, and not many marks at all go to most of the British generals. John Monash is briefly discussed on several pages. At one place, the force under his command ‘was revealing itself to be frayed, jumpy and in no physical shape to meet the demands being made on it’. Monash barely emerges with the clear benefit of the doubt.

Just before and after Christmas 1915, the Allies successfully withdrew their forces and military supplies from Gallipoli. Prior brilliantly explains the ingenuity of this operation: how the illusions that everything was normal were conveyed to the watching, listening Turks by various ruses. Thus, empty supply carts, ‘making as much noise as possible, were sent to the front at night and then, with wheels padded, silently withdrawn fully laden’. This is one of the few Allied episodes that wins praise from Prior; and Brudenell White, the Australian officer, shares in that praise.

To this retreat the author is sympathetic, because it was the competent side of a campaign which, in his view, was always misguided and miscalculated, whether in the secret deliberations in London or the fighting on the ridges of Gallipoli. Prior’s praise even here is slightly backhanded. It is easier, he says, to plan an evacuation than a battle.

In condemning Gallipoli as a military campaign barely worth applauding, Prior gains undeserved impetus – at least in my opinion – by not setting the whole episode in a wider context. In fact, most of the separate campaigns in World War I – the Eastern and Western Front, the Caucasus, Serbia, Salonika, the Dolomites, the Middle East, the sea war in the Atlantic, German East Africa and Gallipoli – were miscalculated by one side or both. Most of these new battle-fronts were marked by long-term or outright failures. Gallipoli is made to seem exceptionally ill-planned, which it probably was not.

Some readers might see one other notable defect in the book: it does not set out in full the case it tries to demolish. Though the military aims of the British at the Dardanelles wobbled from time to time, and were not always recorded carefully (as Prior himself convincingly explains), one definite British aim was to open a sea lane to tsarist Russia. The Allied side consisted of three great forces – British, French and Russian – but the Russians were completely isolated from the other two. The Russian armies were cut off from outside help by land, except for the slow TransSiberian railway, and cut off by sea because Germany’s navy controlled the approaches to St Petersburg and the Turks controlled the entrance to the Black Sea. Nothing in the book points out the deep implications of Russia’s isolation.

Russia ran a huge army but was short of guns, munitions and even soldiers’ boots. If Russia could occasionally be supplied by its allies, it might put more pressure on the German and Austro-Hungarian armies on the Eastern Front. That in turn might lessen Germany’s ability to fight effectively on the Western Front. Another advantage of capturing the Dardanelles was that Russia, one of the world’s busiest pre-war grain exporters, could resume its exports of wheat, especially to those allies which were short of food. The grain argument is hinted at in passing, but not explained or given any weight.

All in all, Prior presents a powerful case that the British were far too confident in thinking that they could knock Turkey out of the war. But it seems unrealistic to go on to argue that, even if Turkey were knocked out, it would have been a non-event. In fact, if Turkey had been defeated in 1915, London, Paris and St Petersburg – and Australia and New Zealand – would all have been overjoyed, and rightly so.

The book’s prose is easily read. It will give the most stimulus to those who are experts, professional or amateur. It tells of the British and French as well as Australian and New Zealand forces. Because of its length, its outlines and backgrounds are necessarily brief. Many readers will benefit greatly if they first breakfast on a book about Gallipoli by such vivid writers as Alan Moorehead, Robert Rhodes James and especially Les Carlyon, before sitting down to supper with Robin Prior. His book will spur debate, and deservedly so, for it has many merits.