Historian's Passchendaele best-seller gets fourth re-print

Professor Glyn Harper’s best-selling Massacre at Passchendaele has been picked up and reprinted by British publisher FireStep Books.

The book deals with New Zealand’s greatest military disaster, in which in the space of a few hours 846 soldiers were killed, more than 2000 were wounded and 138 of those died within a week.

When published, in April 2000, it topped the New Zealand non-fiction sales list, with the first print run of 2000 sold out in under a week. Collectors now classify the hardback version as a rare edition.

Professor Harper says the latest re-print – the fourth – underpins the universal interest in what was probably WWI's worst battle. “There seems to be a growing interest in World War I as the centenary of the conflict approaches. New Zealand military history is really family history and people want to know what their families did and how they were involved."