Military

The compact between the British state and those prepared to die for it is a dubious one, argues Sarah Ingham.

On March 19th, 1942, a British officer, riding the “best polo pony in Burma,” launched a headlong charge against a Japanese machine-gun emplacement. He died as he would probably have chosen to die; and with his death, writes James Lunt, concluded a long and distinguished chapter in the history of the British Army.

Cyril Falls profiles perhaps the ideal soldier in war and, certainly, the ideal British Commander-in-Chief.

The exploits of his youngest brother frequently disturbed Napoleon; but, writes Owen Connolly, of all the brother-kings, Jerome was the most useful to him, the most soldierly and the most loyal.

 “I am a Jingo in the best acceptation of that sobriquet... To see England great is my highest aspiration, and to lead in contributing to that greatness is my only real ambition.” By Edgar Holt. 

An able and victorious commander in North America during the Seven Years War, Amherst three times refused to return to the scene of his triumphs. Rex Whitworth seeks the explanation of the Field Marshal's conduct.

“A game of bluff from start to finish,” said Robert Baden-Powell, British commander during the Second Boer War. Nicholas King describes the seven-months’ siege, that took place in present day South Africa.

The economic and cultural transformation of Russia’s vast possessions in Central Asia is still rapidly going forward. Geoffrey Wheeler describes how she began to enter this field during the first half of the eighteenth century.

In deciding on the Reoccupation of the Rhineland, writes D.C. Watt, Hitler said that he went forward “with the assurance of a sleepwalker...” His practical calculations proved to be “entirely justified.”

Reorganised by Trotsky in 1918, writes David Footman, the Bolshevik forces gradually prevailed against the Whites in Eastern Russia and Siberia.