Sir Basil Liddell Hart was a military strategist and writer of great acclaim, and one of the world's outstanding teacher-historians. Born in Paris in 1895, he was educated at Cambridge before serving on the Western Front with the Yorkshire Light Infantry after which he was military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and The Times. He evolved several military tactical developments including the Battle Drill system and was an early advocate of airpower and armoured forces. He lectured on strategy and tactics at staff colleges in numerous countries. His many books include biographies of several great commanders, and The Other Side of the Hill - his interviews with the Second World War's highest-ranking German generals. He was knighted in 1966 and died in 1970.
Remarkable for its clarity and objectivity ... it remains outstanding: for those familiar with its subject, illuminating and thought-provoking; for those new to it and wishing to know what happened in World War I, the best place to begin * Western Mail * It was always his special talent to be able to express military situations in telling and limpid phrases which would stick in the reader's mind * Daily Telegraph * Brilliant ... the best one-volume history of the First World War ever likely to be wriiten * Naval Review * Scrupulously accurate, brilliantly lucid * British Army Review * The outstanding military historian * Sunday Express * Liddell Hart makes the complicated scene intelligible to the reader with the minimum of effort, and yet incorporates an apt and telling comments at every turn * The Times Literary Supplement * Immensely readable and informative . . . belongs in the possession of anyone interested in what the greatest British military thinker of this century has to say * Soldier *