An early search for WMD

Any author who subtitles his book ‘The true story of …’ this, that or the other inspires some disquiet in the reviewer. If this is the true story, then the implication is that previous versions have been, if not untrue, then at least seriously misinformed. In his history of the British invasion of Tibet in 1903-4, Charles Allen maintains that earlier writers ‘without exception, have accepted the self-serving line first given out by Sir Francis Younghusband’. In so doing, they have done grave injustice to the military commander of the expedition, General Macdonald, who is usually represented as cowardly and indecisive, while in fact he was merely prudent and responsible.

Peter Fleming and Patrick French are the two precursors whom Allen singles out. So far as Fleming is concerned he has a point. In his history of the war Fleming portrays Younghusband as an almost unblemished hero, and though his account of the march to Lhasa is dramatic and colourful, it does not take sufficient account of the logistic and military problems with which the unfortunate general had to grapple.