Related Research Articles
Major-General John Frederick Charles "Boney" Fuller was a senior British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, known as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising principles of warfare. With 45 books and many articles, he was a highly prolific author whose ideas reached army officers and the interested public. He explored the business of fighting, in terms of the relationship between warfare and social, political, and economic factors in the civilian sector. Fuller emphasised the potential of new weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, to stun a surprised enemy psychologically.
Field Marshal William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, was a senior officer of the British Army who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the first year of the Second World War.
Lieutenant General Sir Henry Royds Pownall, was a senior British Army officer who held several command and staff positions during the Second World War. In particular, he was chief of staff to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and Belgium until the battle of France in May/June 1940. He was later chief of staff to General Sir Archibald Wavell until the fall of Singapore in February 1942, and was then chief of staff to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten in South East Asia in 1943–1944.
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase used to imply a capable group of individuals are incompetently led. Coined in classical antiquity, the phrase was commonly used after World War I to describe senior commanders of militaries which participated in the war, most prominently those of the British Armed Forces. The historiography of the United Kingdom during the 20th century frequently described the infantry of the British Army as brave soldiers (lions) being sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent commanders (donkeys).
Sir Hew Francis Anthony Strachan, is a British military historian, well known for his leadership in scholarly studies of the British Army and the history of the First World War. He is currently professor of international relations at the University of St Andrews. Before that Strachan was the Chichele Professor of the History of War at All Souls College, Oxford.
Sir Michael Eliot Howard was an English military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War, Honorary Fellow of All Souls College, Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University, and founder of the Department of War Studies, King's College London. In 1958, he co-founded the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Henry Spenser Wilkinson was the first Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford University. While he was an English writer known primarily for his work on military subjects, he had wide interests. Earlier in his career he was the drama critic for London's Morning Post.
Geoffrey Till is a British naval historian and emeritus Professor of Maritime Studies in the Defence Studies Department of King's College London. He is the Director of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies.
Norman Henry Gibbs was Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford University for 24 years from 1953 to 1977, the longest tenure of all who have held the chair since its establishment in 1909.
Lieutenant-General Sir Lionel Vivian Bond, was a senior officer in the British Army.
Bryan Ranft was a historian of the Royal Navy, who served as Professor of History and International Affairs at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, 1967–1977.
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, commonly known throughout most of his career as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was a British soldier, military historian, and military theorist. He wrote a series of military histories that proved influential among strategists. Arguing that frontal assault was bound to fail at great cost in lives, as proven in World War I, he recommended the "indirect approach" and reliance on fast-moving armoured formations.
Keith John Jeffery MRIA was a Northern Irish historian specialising in modern British, British Imperial, and Irish history.
The Department of War Studies (DWS) is an academic department in the School of Security Studies within the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy at King's College London in London, United Kingdom. Along with other politics and international studies units at King's College London, it ranks amongst the top places for international relations in the world. For international relations in the UK, which is taught within the War Studies Department and the Department of European & International Studies, King's ranks second nationally. The department is devoted to the multi-disciplinary study of war and diplomacy within the broad remit of international relations. It remains one of the only academic departments in the world that can be described as such.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig led the British Expeditionary Force during World War I. His reputation is still controversial. Although a popular commander during the immediate post-war years, with his funeral becoming a day of national mourning, Haig also became an object of criticism for his leadership on the Western Front. He was criticised by politicians such as Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, and by influential historians such as Basil Liddell Hart. Some regard him as representing the very concept of class-based incompetent commanders, stating that he was unable to grasp modern tactics and technologies, and criticism of Haig is sometimes hard to disentangle from criticisms of the war itself. However, many veterans praised Haig's leadership and since the 1980s some historians have argued that the public hatred in which Haig's name had come to be held failed to recognise the adoption of new tactics and technologies by forces under his command, or the important role played by the British forces in the Allied victory of 1918, and that the high casualties suffered were a function of the tactical and strategic realities of the time.
Harry Cranbrook Allen was a British historian of the United States.
Abiodun Alao is a Nigerian academic and professor of African studies at King's College London and the programme director of the African Leadership Centre. He is also the chair of the King's College London Africa Community of Practice and between December 2013 and August 2015 held a visiting professorship position at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, Nigeria. He is the author of A New Narrative for Africa: Voice and Agency, which "examines the perception of Africa in the global system, tracing Africa's transition from a "problem" to be solved into an agent with a rising voice in the world."
Brian Holden-Reid is a British military historian.
Richard Michael Connaughton is a British Army officer and author specialised in military history.
Alexander Danchev was a British historian, biographer, and army officer. His work ranged from military history to the lives of artists. His originality stems from a vast erudition put at the service of a cross-understanding of disparate fields such as art and war.
References
- ↑ Introduction to Liddell Hart: a study of his military thought. London: Cassell, 1977
- ↑ See introduction to "The unquiet Western Front", thanking his "wife Madeleine"
- ↑ https://www.smh-hq.org/docs/HQG/GazetteSP23.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
- ↑ Contemporary authors
