Alchemist of War

Résumé du livre

"Liddell Hart, no warrior, dwelt all his life on war. He abominated its waste, deplored its unreasonableness, but amended the classical dictum as one of his own -- if you wish for peace, understand war. Although his name is synonymous with military thought and military controversy, throughout his career he appeared in a succession of different guises: chronicler, biographer, philosopher, epistoler, agitator, seer. He was variously revered and reviled. He advised Lloyd George, among others, and antagonised Winston Churchill. He befriended T.E. Lawrence. He was hailed as the Clausewitz of the twentieth century. He was 'the Captain who taught Generals', the guru, the sage, the nonpareil. But his career was both frustrating and contradictory; he was out of place and out of favour in Britain for long periods, notably during the Second World War. And yet the Germans respected him, particularly Guderian and Rommel. And there were other Liddell Harts. He was also an expert commentator on lawn tennis, and a leading authority on fashion -- women's fashion. As the historian Michael Howard has observed: 'Liddell Hart was no more simply a military thinker than Shaw simply a playwright or Bertrand Russell simply a philosopher'. 'Alchemist of war : the life of Basil Liddell Hart' is the first biography of the most innovative and influential military statesman of the twentieth century."--