KITCHENER : Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace by Pollock, John

New York, 2001, Carroll & Graf, first US edition, hard bound w/dj, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 6x9, xxii, 598 pages, illus & maps, notes, bibliog. & index. ............................................................ This major new biography of Kitchener reveals the man behind the legend and re-establishes his reputation as a hero of the Empire, showing him to be the principal architect of victory in World War 1. Using official accounts and private letters, John Pollock has produced an enlightening and sympathetic portrait of a giant figure who straddled the age of Empire and the onset of Armageddon.The first volume was previously published as The Road to Omdurman. The second is now published for the first time, making the complete biography available in this one book................................................ Mingling historical narrative with his subject's life, John Pollock ingeniously tells the story of the age and the man, beginning with a youngster of integrity and kindness, whose painful shyness and reserved manner meant he was often misunderstood. This biography traces Kitchener's boyhood in Ireland and Switzerland, his later survey work in the Holy Land and Cyprus, and how he became a "blood brother" of Arabs and a vital link between the outside world and General Gordon, besieged in Khartoum. At a miraculously low cost in both lives and money, he leads the Anglo-Egyptian force at Omdurman in the re-conquest of the Sudan and lays down the principles which, for nearly 60 years, made the Sudan one of the best-governed lands in the British Empire, in the best interests of the people............................................................... The second half of the book opens with Kitchener of Khartoum arriving in the Indian Empire as Commander-in-Chief and his struggle for army reform, followed by his posting to Egypt as proconsul. When the Great War broke out he insisted it would last at least three years and that he must raise a New Army of 3 million men. This began with an immediate recruitment of 100,000 volunteers and led to the image of him which everyone remembers, with Pollock argues that despite his untimely death, Kitchener was the architect of allied victory, and that his planning was masterly and his interventions decisive. The aftermath of Mons, the Munitions Crisis, Gallipoli, the Kut disaster, the stalemate on the Western Front and Kitchener's vision of a peace of reconciliation are all recreated in a dramatic narrative history. The shock and outpouring of grief at his death in the loss of HMS Hampshire, in 1916, was felt throughout the land, from the King and Queen to the most humble, and reveals to what extent . Kitchener had become a national symbol, "our greatest Englishman", said Kitty Inge, wife of the Dean of St Paul's. This superb double-volume biography will transform our view of Kitchener and the First World War.