Macmillan, Pennel, and Paxman are far too young to have spoken first hand top those directly affected. And the are quite the wrong people to make the judgement as to whether the war was necessary or justified. People who were there, and historians writing in a closer time frame are better placed to make that judgement. Because it is a judgement not an issue with a clear yes or no answer. If the war had not been fought, maybe the British state in its form of the time would not have survived. You can argue whether that would have been a good or a bad thing. But I would argue very strongly that the survival of the British state was not worth 18 million lives, a million of those British.