Synopses & Reviews
They are: Hugh Gough, Charles Napier, Charles Gordon, Frederick Roberts, Garnet Wolseley, Evelyn Wood, Hector Macdonald, and Herbert Kitchener.
Review
"[Mr. Farwell] reminds us how much of history has always been about war. The figures he etches are Horatio Alger types with epaulets, conventional men whom luck and daring raised to unconventional situations. . . . Sparely but convincingly, Mr. Farwell conveys a sense of the society they worked in, one that tolerated eccentricity and excess but not transgressions of its male mythology--in which riding and religion were crucial, along with laudanum and chloral and stoic hardihood. Those who shun analyses and learned footnotes, preferring a thundering tale well told--or rather eight of them--should not miss this book." Eugen Weber
Synopsis
This book brings together the lives of eight of Queen Victoria's most renowned and idiosyncratic generals, men who helped create the British Empire and whose lives reflect the vigor and diversity of the age.
About the Author
During the Second World War, Byron Farwell (1921-1999) served as a captain of engineers attached to the Mediterranean Allied Air Force in the British Eighth Army area.