But young Ho’s letters to the President went unanswered. The most notable of these nationalists was Ho Chi Minh (born 1890) who travelled to France after World War One and tried to contact the American delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference, hoping that President Woodrow Wilson would apply his Fourteen Points to Europe’s colonies – particularly French Indochina – and secure their independence.

The higher education the French offered the natives ironically educated a generation of Vietnamese to demand greater freedom and independence. Vietnam had been part of French colonial Indochina since the 1850s, a colonial territory which was consolidated at the turn of the twentieth century. The first hundred or so pages take us through the origins and early stages of the First Indochina War (1946-1954). It clearly sets out to be the definitive account of this military debacle.

Its full title is The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam and it does what it says on the tin at immense length and in fascinating detail, clocking in at a whopping 734 pages, including detailed endnotes, bibliography, list of acronyms, no fewer than 21 maps, and a thorough index. This is a really epic book about an epic battle. ‘While an increasing flow of American dollars, weapons, vehicles and aircraft in the early 1950s did improve the fire and mobility of the CEFEO, they could not offset the fundamental disadvantages of a roadbound army facing a hill and forest army in a country which had few roads but a great many hills and forests.’ (p.129)

The Last Valley by Martin Windrow