Readers may wonder how he selected his 33: 'My title is deliberately ambiguous. Some of these characters are indeed regarded as "great" commanders. Some are not so great—I am interested in elements of failure as well as success—but they have been commanders at some time in British history.' Your reviewer would add that some were evidently born great, some achieved greatness and some had greatness thrust upon them—and bore it awkwardly.
Prof Clarke, founding director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College London and latterly director general of the Royal United Services Institute for defence and security studies, remains our most acute commentator on military affairs today. Naturally, he says, he would have wished for more space to include more individuals, and he apologizes to King Aethelstan but less so to Richard the Lionheart. Across two millennia of British history, however, 'these are the people whose stories I wanted briefly to tell'.
To begin with, he chooses Boudica/Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. He could have chosen Caratacus, who anticipated Boudica by a couple of decades and who was more successful in fighting the Romans, at least initially, but Boudica's gender compels and she was certainly a good deal bloodier than Caratacus.
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Denne historien er fra November 27, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
