Tops of the top brass

The subtitle of this latest study of British generalship, ‘Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World’, sets the bar exclusively high. Perhaps this is why in the introduction we are given three other criteria for the selection of subjects. The author seeks to illustrate military success or failure in the context of the political control of the generals, to describe men who have left a legacy applicable today, and to describe how the factors affecting the conduct of commanders have developed over the last three centuries.

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Brendan O’Neill

The moment in the ‘grooming gangs’ debate that shamed Jess Phillips

Onto this complex and broadly defined parade ground Mark Urban marches ten British generals, each of whom is exposed to us through entertainingly written episodes from careers that take us from the siege of Stirling in 1651 (Monck) to VE Day in 1945 (Montgomery). In between we find Marlborough, Howe, York, Wellington, Gordon, Kitchener, Allenby and Fuller. As the author himself admits, this would not necessarily be the list that others would compile. Howe, whose operational plans led to strategic defeat and the loss of the American colonies, is a surprise. Perhaps this was indeed ‘shaping the world’, but no doubt the North American world would have been reshaped in due course whatever Howe did. And it is surely heaping too much on poor Howe’s shoulders for the author to blame him also for the French revolution and the rise of Napoleon. The inclusion of Gordon who lost his head, literally and metaphorically, in Khartoum is even more surprising. Fascinating as he may be, it is hard to see why this peculiar man should have been included. The justification that he is an early example of a maverick general overstepping his political instructions is pretty thin. It is equally surprising to have omitted Alan Brooke who did more than the rest of the cast to ‘shape the world’ through his acute sense of grand global strategy and his ability to do something about it.