LIDDELL HART, Basil Henry.

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Through the Fog of War. First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Esmé Wingfield-Stratford, a token of long friendship & common endeavours from Basil H. Liddell Hart. 15th December 1938". An archive of their correspondence across more than 30 years is held at King's College London.Wingfield-Stratford (1882-1971) was a prolific writer, outstanding among his 40 books being The History of English Patriotism (1913), The History of British Civilization (1928), and a wartime study of Churchill. "He was intensely patriotic as befitted someone with a military ancestry on both sides devoted in particular to England's free institutions. Yet he was at the same time strongly opposed to the imperialism which was so prominent a feature of the political scene in his early years. He saw tragedy in England's relationship with Ireland and in the conflict with the Boers. This aspect of his thought was fully apparent in his series of volumes on the Victorian age and its aftermath which occupied him in the 1930s" (ODNB).Dedicated to the official historian, Sir J. E. Edmonds, Liddell Hart here "denounce[s] British generalship harshly" (ODNB) and analyses the First World War "when Europe appears to lie under the shadow of another 'Great War'" (foreword). He gives a brief overview of the conflict, followed by chapters on the leading personalities (T. E. Lawrence included); covers personal views from some of the main protagonists; focuses on the campaign

• Printing: first

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