How would the newspapers have reacted if Osama bin Laden had been killed on the same day as the Royal Wedding? No doubt tragedy would have ensued as 1,000 despairing picture editors hurled themselves into the sea. I’m glad the two events didn’t coincide, not least because the death of the military historian Professor Richard Holmes would have passed unnoticed.
Many will remember Holmes’ clipped speech and solemn manner on television as he strode around the slopes of Waterloo or the Somme, relating past events with a singularly engaging zeal.
But Holmes was more than just a TV historian, a phrase imbued with pejorative overtones. He was a revered academic who lectured on military history at Sandhurst for many years. Generations of now senior officers are said to have sat at his feet enraptured as Holmes spoke. He also held posts at Reading and Cranfield universities at various stages of his career.
His qualities as a teacher were apparently based on an immense body of knowledge and an innate gift as a raconteur. These made him a natural for the after dinner circuit. I was lucky enough to hear him speak shortly before his death about the Battle of Malplaquet – one of the bloodiest of the Duke of Marlborough’s victories. As his audience laboured under the weight of a roast and claret, Holmes gave a speech of light wit and deftly deployed learning. He gave a measured account of the battle and included a colourful sweep of Marlborough’s life and career and a summary of the politics of Britain’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession. Politics, personalities and technicalities were immersed in an amusing and self-effacing speech; it was, in short, the perfect lesson.
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Famously, the US Navy SEAL Team Six assassinated Osama bin Laden on Sunday. By chance, one of their number, Howard E. Wasdin, has just written a memoir of his experiences of counter-terrorism in Somalia and the Gulf: Napoleon is supposed to have asked if an officer was “lucky” when considering promotion; publishers might have to ask the same question of untried authors. Bookshops are replete with these first hand accounts of modern warfare, but little critical scholarship has yet emerged. It’s a pity that we’ll never know what Holmes thought of the current campaigns.
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