Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace

by John Charles Pollock

Book Overview

With access to the private papers of the heroic Kitchener of Khartoum-victor of the Battle of Omdurman and avenger of the disastrously massacred General Gordon-this definitive biography, including 32... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786708298
• ISBN13: 9780786708291
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Eminent Victorian

K was a military guy with a big moustache and similar ego whose speciality was occasionally slaughtering thousands of locals in one of the many outposts of the outsize British Empire (Sudan, Egypt, India). His training as an engineer brought a new dimension to military thinking - the importance of logistics (surely only K could have thought it possible to build a railway in order to bring his army to the battlefield). In this he was a prototype for modern military commanders like Rommel and perhaps Patton. When many predicted at the beginning of WW1 that it would be over by Christmas, he said three years. He's a hard guy to read (or even like) but if you wish to know more about his professional career this book has it all.

shows the imperfection and the achievements

I read a review on here and chose not to read this book - boy how stupid I would have been and what I would have missed! I got this book and am beginning the final fourth: this is a comprehensive biography and a competent one. I'll say that again farther down, but this author has done a tremendous job with a remarkable life in an important time, a man at the center of many events and doings forming parts of our world and helping to define the 'our time' of those who came before us, which we inherited. Firstly, this author devotes an entire appendix to the sexual question, and whether or not a reader agrees with the conclusions the issue is quite addressed. Now that is remarked, time to move on: one does not have to be a detractor, busting the myths of good deeds of a life, to be a biographer, in fact most have some reason for writing on a person, often a fan or at least appreciating some things that personage did: this author has given us a very full and balanced account of a man who, while far less than perfect, gave what was needed during some difficult and climaxing British times: keen confidence and loyal leadership. K was most certainly not perfect, and Pollock shows how K made many mistakes, sometimes noticing the thing himself and regretting, and sometimes not noticing then hearing a friend point it out, then agreeing and regretting. He was great at deciding and issuing orders yet not remarkable at chatting, no manoeuvering manipulator here; not great at the rubbing elbows and chatting or curbing his tongue in subtle areas; his biggest problem came from errantly speaking his mind then finding himself used by a consumate and macchiavellian politician. K was no brilliant politician and made mistakes; but he came into his own in the Sudan command and knew how to run the India Army, or any army; he also made a huge difference in realizing what the first year of the great war would require and getting that going in the face of great opposition. The man did not lack personal and political courage. But this author has done the main job of a biographer, showing how this man came to do the achievements and leadership he did at critical times by showing the personality's development and viewpoint: showing from where and how he came, and how those he knew and events he experienced affected and formed him to be the shy yet confident man he became, learning by trial and fire as he went, with flawed facets and yet a rare magnetism and decisiveness others required, enjoyed and benefited from. If I had been a colonel recalled from a field command to plan and slave for some senior potentate, I would have enjoyed doing it for K for the same reasons his staffs appreciated him and were loyal: he earned his colonelcy and his generalship by decisive plans and actions, loyalty to friends and fellows, and a keen mind properly bent to the joint struggles and joint end. I now must go read the other biographies of this author I previously had never heard of, but

A life of enviable adventure.

Though it is now possible to recognise Kitchener as the architect of a British victory that he did not live to see in the Great War, he has often come across as a stiff, remote and unimaginative figure. This first volume of a two-part biography goes far to change that impression and portrays Kitchener as a sensitive man of high intelligence, capable of great affection, loyalty and kindness. His apparent shyness is here revealed to have been a result of chronic eye problems, which he was largely successful in covering up, while a serious facial wound left him with an almost invariably severe impression. A delightful photograph in this book, which is new to this reviewer at least, showing Kitchener beaming as he is reunited in Britain with the Cameron Highlanders who provided his personal escort in South Africa, reveals a totally different side to the conventional picture. This biography makes for easy reading - and is a suitable companion piece to Mr.Pollock's excellent earlier work on that other great Royal Engineer, Charles Gordon, Kitchener's idol. The life here described is one of enviable adventure, admirable courage and daunting responsibility. Kitchener emerges not just as an ideal engineer and manager, but as a man of considerable daring and initiative, with an uncanny ability to pick up languages quickly, to understand alien cultures, and to evoke loyalty from peoples of widely differing racial and religious backgrounds. His diplomatic skills are also seen to be of a high order, as exemplified by his handling of the Fashoda incident and his efforts to bring the Boer War to a negotiated settlement. Somewhat of a surprise is the extent to which strong but unostentatious religious convictions underpinned his behaviour. A virtue of this biography is that Kitchener is portrayed as a man of his time, and judged as such, without projection of twenty-first century values on him - typical being the manner in which speculations by later biographers as to possible homosexuality are robustly dismissed in an appendix. This is one of those rare biographies that one would have wished to have been considerably longer. One would have welcomed considerably more detail on the more minor battles in the Sudan, such as Firket and Um Diyaykarat. This small gripe apart, this book is a splendid treat for aficionados of the Victorian period and one looks forward with impatience to the second volume.