Redcoats to Tommies: The Experience of the British Soldier from the Eighteenth Century is a coherent and engaging volume that provides new insights into the British army from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The broad chronology adopted by editors Kevin Linch and Matthew Lord is a strength of the volume as they seek to demonstrate continuity and change in the British soldiery experience. This aim is certainly achieved through the various contributions, with clear continuity in the struggle that Britain, an unmilitary society throughout the period under investigation, had trying to recruit the numbers of voluntary troops necessary for warfare from the French Revolutionary Wars to the First World War. Several chapters examine the markers that motivated men to enlist and defined their experiences once recruited, which remained relatively constant over time. George Hay outlines the association of the Yeomanry Cavalry, formed in the 1790s, with foxhunting in a way that consolidated both their rural and middle-class identity, while Peter Doyle's examination of the Pals battalions during the First World War emphasizes the role of class in encouraging men to enlist to fight alongside others of a similar social standing. The region, and beyond, and class also played an important role in the nineteenth century. Edward Gosling investigates the 1872–73 Localisation Acts to demonstrate the army's attempts to impart a regional identity on the regiments in an attempt to aid recruitment, while the officers who joined the Indian Army Officer Corps during the latter half of the century tended to have a shared middle-class background and prior imperial connections, most often through their fathers’ military or civil service.

Chronological changes are most notable through the ebbing and flowing of public perceptions of Britain's soldiery. Edward Gosling identifies some level of softening of public perceptions toward the military during the late nineteenth century as civilians took more interest in the soldier than the institution of the military and came to have increased knowledge of soldiers’ experiences through increasing press coverage, military reforms, and a growing culture of militarism fostered through literature and empire. This helps to explain the public involvement in charitable attempts to provision soldiers during the First World War, which Michael Reeve demonstrates through a case study of cigarettes and tobacco products. However, as Ian Beckett argues, the more positive images of the soldier and increasing interest in the army did not make it any easier for it to recruit to its establishment, a situation that continues to this day, demonstrating continuity of the unmilitary society.

Linch and Lord's decision to incorporate an inclusive definition of soldier that encompasses not just regular soldiers but auxiliary, imperial, and foreign troops who served Britain's military is another strength of the volume. Here, continuity comes through in the way that distance from the army's central command in London affected the experiences of all soldiers. Rob Tildesley outlines the impact of government disinterest and distance on the supply and defense of the important garrison of Minorca in the mid-eighteenth century. Tildesley makes excellent use of official papers such as the Ordnance Office Bill Books and papers of the Commissary General to demonstrate the difficulties the regular soldiers faced in securing the island in the years preceding the 1756 siege. Christina Welsch also highlights the role of distance in the creation of a coherent military lobby amongst officers serving in the East India Company. In this instance distance worked to different effect, as the lobby was successful in securing the officers equal rank with British officers serving in India. It was the fact these officers were serving in India, where they could draw on an imperial ideology that accepted the necessity of militarization, that enabled them to form a political lobby at home whilst concurrently emphasizing a shared identity with their regular counterparts in order to achieve their aims.

Yet distance also provides an example of discontinuity within the soldiery experience, exemplified by Hay's examination of the composition and experiences of the Yeomanry Cavalry. Hay demonstrates their role as both a rural force that performed a policing role in the country and as an institution that provided opportunities for social advancement amongst the emerging middling class who lacked the contacts and influence of the nobility. Such troops were not necessarily distant from London, but they were removed from many of the military experiences that came with service abroad and did not undergo any significant transformation from civilians to soldiers, unlike most of those soldiers examined in the volume. And, as Gavin Daly highlights, for the troops serving in South America during the 1807 Siege of Montevideo, it was not distance from London that affected experience but rather cultural distance from their Spanish enemy. Daly recounts the British regulars’ actions during the siege, when they broke from tradition and undertook retributive justice against the Spanish soldiers but did not go on to sack the city. The association of the Spanish with the Indigenous and enslaved populations led to the othering of the Spanish and helps explain the British violence during the siege. Such othering, and its association with violent pacification, was common in the imperial warfare of the period, but the British decision not to extend such retribution to the civilian population marked Montevideo out as a somewhat unique experience.

Linch and Lord's lifecycle approach of Redcoats to Tommies, through which they organize the volume into four parts, examining recruitment, experiences, place in society, and military identity and memory, is generally effective in tying together these broad themes. However, the divisions appear a little arbitrary in places. Given that experience is the driving focus of the whole volume, a specific section dedicated to experiences in the military seems unnecessary, while the interconnected nature of identity and experience makes the inclusion of a specific section titled “Military Identity and Memory” seem similarly redundant. The quality of the contributions under these headings makes such quibbles minor. With such a broad remit to address, Linch and Lord could not possibly have drawn studies of soldiery experience from all relevant aspects. Nonetheless, they and the contributors have done remarkably well in showcasing the diversity of the British soldier from the eighteenth century onward and outlining continuity and change in experience not only over time, but also within different sections of the military establishment. Redcoats to Tommies will be of interest to all military historians seeking to consider questions of identity, experience, and the boundaries between the civil and military spheres.