The Victoria Cross and the George Cross: The Complete History, review

Britain’s two premier medals for bravery, the Victoria Cross and the George Cross, have been awarded to fewer than 1,800 servicemen and civilians in their century and a half of existence. Given their rarity it is little wonder that individual medals can fetch up to £400,000 at auction. 

Yet accurate details about the history of the awards, their recipients and where and how they were won, have been woefully inadequate until the publication of this three-volume authorised history. The fruit of more than a decade of research, and averaging just under 1,000 pages a volume, it is a monumental work of scholarship that will be the standard reference work on these gallantry awards for decades to come.

The Victoria Cross was founded in 1856 to emulate the French introduction of a national award that recognised outstanding bravery in battle. It was the first gallantry medal for servicemen of all ranks and remains “the highest and most prestigious recognition of exceptional valour in the face of the enemy”. Its civilian equivalent, the George Cross, was introduced during the Battle of the Blitz in 1940. “The need for a decoration to recognise heroism exhibited not immediately in the face of the enemy,” explain the editors, “but on a level with those actions awarded the Victoria Cross was highlighted by the extreme courage shown by civilians and Service personnel involved with bomb and mine disposal at the beginning of the Second World War.”

The editors dispel the rumour that current VCs are no longer made from the bronze cascabels (balancing weights) of Russian cannon captured at Sebastopol in 1855. “There is still enough metal from this source,” they explain, “to make 60 more crosses and the truncated cannon themselves can be seen at the Royal Artillery Museum at Woolwich.” So prone to shattering is this poor-quality bronze that the casting “has to be done in sand and takes much finishing, resulting in minor variations in the design”. No two medals, in consequence, are exactly alike.

The first batch of 62 VCs were awarded to Crimean War veterans by Queen Victoria at a special military review in Hyde Park on June 26, 1857. She was riding her horse Sunset and “wearing, for the first time, a field marshal’s uniform especially adapted in design”. What the editors omit to mention is that Victoria unwittingly pushed the pin of the medal into the chest of the first recipient, a legless veteran of the Battle of the Redan, who bore the eye-watering pain in silence. The queen was none the wiser.