THE BRAMALL PAPERS

REFLECTIONS ON WAR AND PEACE

Pen & Sword, 373pp, £25, Oldie price £16.64 inc p&p Like Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi Lord Bramall is ‘a blunt soldier’. And if his candour has sometimes landed him in hot water, it has also endeared him to military historians like Sir Max Hastings and Saul David. In the Daily

Mail Sir Max praised Lord Bramall’s ‘fearless commitment to speaking unpalatable truths, whether about the past, present or future’. In the Daily

Telegraph, Saul David described the Field Marshal as ‘a brave and talented soldier who became the finest military theorist of his generation, a reputation that will be enhanced by this diverse collection of his articles, speeches and letters, spanning more than forty years’.

Aged 21 Lord Bramall won an MC in Normandy. After the war he turned down a place at Oxford and became a regular. Following the Falklands war, in which he played a key role, he was promoted to Field Marshal as Chief of Defence Staff.

What Saul David called his ‘no-nonsense speeches’ about defence in the House of Lords were informed by his study of history, without which, he thought, you couldn’t form a rounded view of current and future strategy. ‘His sage words,’ said David, ‘should be required reading for politicians of all hues.’ Choosing this as one of his books of the year in the

Tablet, AN Wilson said it was ‘a timely reminder that, although the British are not much good at anything else these days, they still produce marvellous soldiers’.