No comments about Louie: A Country Lady (Reminiscence).

1 comments about In His Own Little Room Again.

1. This book is an autobiographical account of growing up in the outer northern suburbs of London in the early 1940s, both in the war years and immediate post-war ones. To me it was an odd experience to read it as it mirrored my own experience of growing up at in the same place at much the same time. As well as an interesting autobiography it is an interesting and accurate sociological commentary of a place and time when children had much freedom, and independence than is safely available and acceptable in modern society

4 comments about Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace.

1. K was a military guy with a big moustache and similar ego whose speciality was occasionally slaughtering thousands of locals in one of the many outposts of the outsize British Empire (Sudan, Egypt, India). His training as an engineer brought a new dimension to military thinking - the importance of logistics (surely only K could have thought it possible to build a railway in order to bring his army to the battlefield). In this he was a prototype for modern military commanders like Rommel and perhaps Patton. When many predicted at the beginning of WW1 that it would be over by Christmas, he said three years. He's a hard guy to read (or even like) but if you wish to know more about his professional career this book has it all.



2. I read a review on here and chose not to read this book - boy how stupid I would have been and what I would have missed! I got this book and am beginning the final fourth: this is a comprehensive biography and a competent one. I'll say that again farther down, but this author has done a tremendous job with a remarkable life in an important time, a man at the center of many events and doings forming parts of our world and helping to define the 'our time' of those who came before us, which we inherited.
   Firstly, this author devotes an entire appendix to the sexual question, and whether or not a reader agrees with the conclusions the issue is quite addressed.
   
   Now that is remarked, time to move on: one does not have to be a detractor, busting the myths of good deeds of a life, to be a biographer, in fact most have some reason for writing on a person, often a fan or at least appreciating some things that personage did: this author has given us a very full and balanced account of a man who, while far less than perfect, gave what was needed during some difficult and climaxing British times: keen confidence and loyal leadership. K was most certainly not perfect, and Pollock shows how K made many mistakes, sometimes noticing the thing himself and regretting, and sometimes not noticing then hearing a friend point it out, then agreeing and regretting. He was great at deciding and issuing orders yet not remarkable at chatting, no manoeuvering manipulator here; not great at the rubbing elbows and chatting or curbing his tongue in subtle areas; his biggest problem came from errantly speaking his mind then finding himself used by a consumate and macchiavellian politician. K was no brilliant politician and made mistakes; but he came into his own in the Sudan command and knew how to run the India Army, or any army; he also made a huge difference in realizing what the first year of the great war would require and getting that going in the face of great opposition. The man did not lack personal and political courage.
   
   But this author has done the main job of a biographer, showing how this man came to do the achievements and leadership he did at critical times by showing the personality's development and viewpoint: showing from where and how he came, and how those he knew and events he experienced affected and formed him to be the shy yet confident man he became, learning by trial and fire as he went, with flawed facets and yet a rare magnetism and decisiveness others required, enjoyed and benefited from. If I had been a colonel recalled from a field command to plan and slave for some senior potentate, I would have enjoyed doing it for K for the same reasons his staffs appreciated him and were loyal: he earned his colonelcy and his generalship by decisive plans and actions, loyalty to friends and fellows, and a keen mind properly bent to the joint struggles and joint end. I now must go read the other biographies of this author I previously had never heard of, but I can greatly recommend this comprehensive and professionally thorough biography including the hallmarks of a well-done one: just have a read at his tremendous sources, including archives and private letters, a great lot of endnotes, bibliographies including manuscripts and newspapers of the times. Even if you care not for the man, you can get a good view of the critical and shaping times across continents between 1880 and 1916, the year K was killed with his staff upon the mined cruiser traveling to Russia for important allied meetings.
   
   This thing is huge with a ton of primary sources woven into dialog and indented paras to show us not only what they did but how these critically placed people felt about each other: this book tells the events and more, but rather than making me put it down every three pages - I would look up after twenty and realize I'm late for something.



3. Lord Kitchner has an apologist in Mr. Pollock. If you are expecting an objective historical account, I do not recommend this book. The lack of objective thought makes one suspect that the book was written during the Victorian period and not at the start of the twenty-first century. Examples abound, but I will site two as representative. Rumors that Lord K was a homosexual because he never married and was very found of young adjutants are dismissed by Mr. Pollock as a modern bias that would make anyone fond of young men and not a womanizer a homosexual. That is not historical writing from sources, it is the opinion of the author in the nature of conjecture. Secondly, Mr. Pollack dismisses the Murant incident during the Boer war as a subject for "fiction" writers, after admitting that in a suspicious case Kitchner signed the execution papers and then made himself indisposed to appeals for clemency. Why did K do that Mr. Pollock? To answer that, by historical research is your task as a historian. Instead of research we have evasion of the issue. This blot on Lord Kitchner's reputation cannot be dismissed by an objective historian via relegating it to the dustbin of history, with a comment that the incident is a good one for fiction writers.



4. Though it is now possible to recognise Kitchener as the architect of a British victory that he did not live to see in the Great War, he has often come across as a stiff, remote and unimaginative figure. This first volume of a two-part biography goes far to change that impression and portrays Kitchener as a sensitive man of high intelligence, capable of great affection, loyalty and kindness. His apparent shyness is here revealed to have been a result of chronic eye problems, which he was largely successful in covering up, while a serious facial wound left him with an almost invariably severe impression. A delightful photograph in this book, which is new to this reviewer at least, showing Kitchener beaming as he is reunited in Britain with the Cameron Highlanders who provided his personal escort in South Africa, reveals a totally different side to the conventional picture.

   This biography makes for easy reading - and is a suitable companion piece to Mr.Pollock's excellent earlier work on that other great Royal Engineer, Charles Gordon, Kitchener's idol. The life here described is one of enviable adventure, admirable courage and daunting responsibility. Kitchener emerges not just as an ideal engineer and manager, but as a man of considerable daring and initiative, with an uncanny ability to pick up languages quickly, to understand alien cultures, and to evoke loyalty from peoples of widely differing racial and religious backgrounds. His diplomatic skills are also seen to be of a high order, as exemplified by his handling of the Fashoda incident and his efforts to bring the Boer War to a negotiated settlement. Somewhat of a surprise is the extent to which strong but unostentatious religious convictions underpinned his behaviour. A virtue of this biography is that Kitchener is portrayed as a man of his time, and judged as such, without projection of twenty-first century values on him - typical being the manner in which speculations by later biographers as to possible homosexuality are robustly dismissed in an appendix. This is one of those rare biographies that one would have wished to have been considerably longer. One would have welcomed considerably more detail on the more minor battles in the Sudan, such as Firket and Um Diyaykarat. This small gripe apart, this book is a splendid treat for aficionados of the Victorian period and one looks forward with impatience to the second volume.

No comments about Eugene Aram.

No comments about The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1666 N.S.

No comments about The Life Of Dr. John Colet: Dean Of St. Paul's In The Reigns Of Henry VII And Henry VIII And Founder Of St. Paul's School.

No comments about Disraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics (Anthem Nineteenth Century).

No comments about The Life Of William Ewart Gladstone V1.

No comments about Histoire d'Espagne, depuis la découverte qui en a été faite par les phéniciens, jusqu'a la mort de Charles III: Tome 2.

1 comments about Wellington: A Military Life.

1. Gordon Corrigan's "Wellington-A Military Life" tries hard to find a new niche in the substantial literature about the First Duke of Wellington. "Wellington" is not a standard biography in that Corrigan doesn't spend a lot of pages on Wellington's life away from the military. Nor is it a battle history of Wellington's campaigns, although these are sketched at varying levels of detail in the course of the narrative. Nor is it an operational or strategic level history of the Napoleonic Wars in the manner of Oman or Chandler.
   
   Corrigan's approach is to depict Wellington as a military officer in the context of the British Army and of the wars of his time. It seems clear from the narrative and the footnotes that the author is very familiar with the British Army of Wellington's time and of our own. The focus is on Wellington's development as a officer through his experiences in Ireland, Flanders, India, the Peninsula, and the final Campaign of the Hundred Days. Corrigan provides much contextual discussion on the ways in which the British military establishment did its business in that day and age. Corrigan's prose is solid, straightforward, and unvarnished. His narrative is interesting and seems to cover all the major points in an already well-plowed field.
   
   It seems clear that Corrigan admires Wellington as a military leader, and the narrative makes the case that Wellington was an exceptionally professional and succcessful military officer, even by the battle-hardened standards of his time. The intent to package Wellington's long military career into a single volume of moderate length means many details must be glossed over and some controversies bypassed, but the author does provide some interesting items for consideration. For example, he asserts that there is no definitive proof that Wellington was ever unfaithful to his wife. This statement is possibly correct in the narrowest sense, although it flies in the face of both a wealth of anecdotes and the judgment of other historians. For another example, Corrigan dismisses much of the academic controversy over the respective generalships of Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo, by noting that each was ultimately responsible for the conduct of the army each led. Wellington fought a hands-on battle on ground of his own choosing in coordination with his Prussian counterpart; Napoleon gambled much and delegated much, and paid the price.
   
   Corrigan offers short but effective bio's of some of the officers with whom Wellington served. His discussion of Sir John Moore, for example, is more nuanced than the usual hagiographic comments; Corrigan brings out Moore's challenges with higher authority, although he does not give full credit for the beneficial strategic results of Moore's aborted campaign in Spain in late 1808, which probably distracted Napoleon from completing the military conquest of Spain.
   
   Corrigan's biography of Wellington is a very serviceable one volume history for the general reader and for the military professional looking for a straightforward narrative.