The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill
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Great Military Lives
Foreword by
William Hague
THE TIMES
A CENTURY IN OBITUARIES
GENERAL EDITOR: IAN BRUNSKILL
EDITED BY GUY LIARDET AND MICHAEL TILLOTSON
TIMES BOOKS
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION Major-General Michael Tillotson
Politicians should always be very careful when commenting on military matters. My own hero, William Pitt the Younger, was right to say that ‘I distrust extremely any ideas of my own on military subjects’, despite the fact that he was the longest serving war leader in the modern history of Britain. Even he, a statesman who built the great international coalitions against revolutionary France, found that as a man who had never seen a battlefield, his second-guessing of generals from Downing Street could lead to disaster.
This magnificent collection of obituaries of great military leaders from The Times offers plenty of reminders of just how tense the relations between generals and political leaders can be in wartime: Lord Alanbrooke,