Kitchener : the man behind the legend /

A hero of the Victorian era, British general Horatio Herbert Kitchener (18501916) was as famous for his stern, ``military'' appearance as for his victories on distant battlefields in the Sudan and South Africa. In this well-researched biography, based on family papers, military historian Warner shows that Kitchener, first Earl of Khartoum and Broome, was a complex figure who, while certainly out of touch with the lives of average soldiers, was at heart an adventurer hiding behind a huge, forbidding mustache. Beginning with the future hero's sheltered childhood and his ``schoolboy-adventure-story'' life as a military surveyor in Palestine and Egypt, the author recounts his rapid career rise, his well-planned battle campaigns and his many conflicts with politicians. This is an informed, balanced account that convincingly disputes many myths, including the notion that Kitchener was homosexual. Warner's books include The Crimean War. (March 20) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In this popular biography of Kitchener, we find neither the latent homosexual nor the self-centered eccentric of other recent biographies but a Victorian gentleman whose successes as adventurer, administrator, and general combined with his own quirks of personality to generate criticism and misunderstanding. But Warner tends to overstate his case for Kitchener's normality and competence. He also fails to establish Kitchener's professional milieu. The book moves so rapidly through the Sudan, Egypt, India, etc., that readers will find it difficult to evaluate Warner's arguments. George Cassar's more scholarly Kitchener (London: Kimber, 1977) presents a similar view and is preferable for academic libraries. This is comparable in quality and appeal to Philip Magnus's Kitchener (1958) . For general readers. Dennis E. Show alter, History Dept., Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A mostly military biography of the ultimate imperialist, by a senior lecturer at Sandhurst; while dubbing his book ""The Man Behind the Legend,"" Warner provides just an occasional glimpse of the man behind the myth. Kitchener, whose career spanned duty in the Sudan, India, and South Africa, has always been seen as an aloof, intolerant, noblesse-oblige sort of figure (even though he received phenomenal adulation from all classes back home in England). Warner's presentation does not diverge that much from this tradition, but he does try to demonstrate that Kitchener's public persona arose out of a constitutional shyness that made it difficult for him to interact with others until he had gotten to know them well. (After that, Warner says, he could be as fetching and caring as anyone else.) Warner shows us a Kitchener with eerily ominous instincts for the right military moves (his only false ones seem to have come when he was talked out of his intuitions by conventional logic). Kitchener's perceptions of pre-Revolutionary Russia's intentions toward Afghanistan would make Jeanne Dixon look like a piker, what with recent events there. A widely published military historian, Warner has written biographies of Auchinleck and Sir Brian Horrocks, as well as histories of the Crimean War, D-day, and E1 Alamein. For deeper insights into Kitchener's life and tactics, Sir Philip Magnus' biography is still best. But Warner's work will be useful for the few new personal nuggets it reveals. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.