Dimensions
130 x 199 x 19mm
Douglas Haig commanded the British Army in France from December 1915 until the end of the First World War. As C-in-C, he presided over both calamitous failure - the campaigns on the Somme in 1916 and at Passchendaele the following year - and remarkable success - the final, war-winning Allied offensive of 1918.
Inevitably, posterity has struggled to pass judgement on Haig. Some have dismissed him as a callous butcher. Others have lionised him. Yet what sort of man really was he?
Noted military historian and biographer Philip Warner offers neither condemnation nor eulogy of Haig. Instead, he presents a fascinating but paradoxical figure - a taciturn and often inarticulate man who was both shrewd and ambitious, a dogged cavalryman who nonetheless eagerly embraced new weapons such as the tank, an aloof figure who was deeply affected by the loss of life on the Western Front.
This book is the story of a soldier's life. It is also the story of how the junior officer who struck his peers as industrious but undistinguished became the commander of iron self-control who led his army to win the most gruelling war in history.
