Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace [Hardcover]

John Pollock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2001

He returned to London a hero in the autumn of 1898. The city went wild. He was Kitchener of Khartoum: victor of the Battle of Omdurman, destroyer of tyranny, avenger of the massacred General Gordon. Sir Herbert Kitchener had reconquered the Sudan and laid down principles that for sixty years made it one of the most humanely governed lands in the British Empire. Based on the Kitchener Papers and Royal Archives as well as contemporary manuscripts and private letters, this new biography records the military triumphs and peace of reconciliation Kitchener achieved in South Africa; his postings in India as commander in chief and Egypt as proconsul; the strategy that, despite Kitchener's death by enemy action in 1916, guided the Allies to victory in the Great War. Thoroughly researched, too, are the brutality, butchery, and homosexuality that have in recent times clouded Kitchener's reputation. What emerges beyond the iconic public figure who clashed with Lloyd George and Churchill is the man often capable of great compassion and humanitarian vision.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Best known as the brutal muscle behind Britain's late 19th-century participation in the "Scramble for Africa," whereby European powers vied with one another to divide the continent, Kitchener (1850-1916) and his tactics--which included concentration camps and massive scorched-earth policies in the Sudan and during the Boer War--have not fared so well over time. British biographer Pollock (Wilberforce; etc.) uses a trove of family papers, the Royal Archives, contemporary letters and other accounts to rehabilitate his subject painstakingly, painting the victory at Sudan's Omdurman (1898), the peace settlement with the Boers in South Africa (1902), the reform of the Indian Army and other conquests as rightly making him Britain's most respected general at the start of WWI. Pollock shows Kitchener predicting the costly length of the war and remarking that only an impartial peace conference would avoid future war in Europe. Kitchener drowned in June 1916 when a British cruiser struck a German mine and sank en route to Russia, so his participation was cut short. Pollock uses his sources adroitly to bring to life the personal strengths and weaknesses of Britain's then-most-admired general, which is this book's main contribution. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Mar.)Forecast: The first third of this near-hagiography was published in the U.K. in 1998, and was extensively reviewed. This expanded, simultaneous publication may generate further interest across the pond, but few beyond buffs and specialists will seek it out over here. Nevertheless, it is the only Kitchener biography currently in print in the U.S., and its extensive primary research may contribute to library sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the pantheon of heroes of the British Empire, Herbert Kitchener has been one of the more revered. His military accomplishments include the reconquest of the Sudan, the staving off of disaster and eventual victory in the Boer War, and the development of a "successful" strategy for British forces during World War I. In addition, Kitchener, a deeply devout man, was viewed as the ideal Christian warrior by proponents of "muscular Christianity." Yet, a true understanding of his personality has always seemed just out of reach, partially due to Kitchener's shyness and reserve (or aloofness and arrogance). Pollack, a biographer who has previously written lives of other imperial icons, penetrates the stern, unflappable mask Kitchener presented to the public. Pollack is an unabashed admirer, and his efforts to gloss over Kitchener's occasional wartime brutalities do not ring true. Still, he makes a convincing case that Kitchener was a man of surprising warmth and compassion with an unusual appreciation of the limits of military force in solving social conflicts. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers; 1st Ed. (U.S.) edition (April 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786708298
• ISBN-13: 978-0786708291
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,280,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A life of enviable adventure., May 21, 2001

By 

Donal A. O'Neill - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace (Hardcover)

Though it is now possible to recognise Kitchener as the architect of a British victory that he did not live to see in the Great War, he has often come across as a stiff, remote and unimaginative figure. This first volume of a two-part biography goes far to change that impression and portrays Kitchener as a sensitive man of high intelligence, capable of great affection, loyalty and kindness. His apparent shyness is here revealed to have been a result of chronic eye problems, which he was largely successful in covering up, while a serious facial wound left him with an almost invariably severe impression. A delightful photograph in this book, which is new to this reviewer at least, showing Kitchener beaming as he is reunited in Britain with the Cameron Highlanders who provided his personal escort in South Africa, reveals a totally different side to the conventional picture.

This biography makes for easy reading - and is a suitable companion piece to Mr.Pollock's excellent earlier work on that other great Royal Engineer, Charles Gordon, Kitchener's idol. The life here described is one of enviable adventure, admirable courage and daunting responsibility. Kitchener emerges not just as an ideal engineer and manager, but as a man of considerable daring and initiative, with an uncanny ability to pick up languages quickly, to understand alien cultures, and to evoke loyalty from peoples of widely differing racial and religious backgrounds. His diplomatic skills are also seen to be of a high order, as exemplified by his handling of the Fashoda incident and his efforts to bring the Boer War to a negotiated settlement. Somewhat of a surprise is the extent to which strong but unostentatious religious convictions underpinned his behaviour. A virtue of this biography is that Kitchener is portrayed as a man of his time, and judged as such, without projection of twenty-first century values on him - typical being the manner in which speculations by later biographers as to possible homosexuality are robustly dismissed in an appendix. This is one of those rare biographies that one would have wished to have been considerably longer. One would have welcomed considerably more detail on the more minor battles in the Sudan, such as Firket and Um Diyaykarat. This small gripe apart, this book is a splendid treat for aficionados of the Victorian period and one looks forward with impatience to the second volume.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars shows the imperfection and the achievements, November 1, 2004

By 

robertcs "robertcs" (the real Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace (Paperback)

I read a review on here and chose not to read this book - boy how stupid I would have been and what I would have missed! I got this book and am beginning the final fourth: this is a comprehensive biography and a competent one. I'll say that again farther down, but this author has done a tremendous job with a remarkable life in an important time, a man at the center of many events and doings forming parts of our world and helping to define the 'our time' of those who came before us, which we inherited.
Firstly, this author devotes an entire appendix to the sexual question, and whether or not a reader agrees with the conclusions the issue is quite addressed.

Now that is remarked, time to move on: one does not have to be a detractor, busting the myths of good deeds of a life, to be a biographer, in fact most have some reason for writing on a person, often a fan or at least appreciating some things that personage did: this author has given us a very full and balanced account of a man who, while far less than perfect, gave what was needed during some difficult and climaxing British times: keen confidence and loyal leadership. K was most certainly not perfect, and Pollock shows how K made many mistakes, sometimes noticing the thing himself and regretting, and sometimes not noticing then hearing a friend point it out, then agreeing and regretting. He was great at deciding and issuing orders yet not remarkable at chatting, no manoeuvering manipulator here; not great at the rubbing elbows and chatting or curbing his tongue in subtle areas; his biggest problem came from errantly speaking his mind then finding himself used by a consumate and macchiavellian politician. K was no brilliant politician and made mistakes; but he came into his own in the Sudan command and knew how to run the India Army, or any army; he also made a huge difference in realizing what the first year of the great war would require and getting that going in the face of great opposition. The man did not lack personal and political courage.

But this author has done the main job of a biographer, showing how this man came to do the achievements and leadership he did at critical times by showing the personality's development and viewpoint: showing from where and how he came, and how those he knew and events he experienced affected and formed him to be the shy yet confident man he became, learning by trial and fire as he went, with flawed facets and yet a rare magnetism and decisiveness others required, enjoyed and benefited from. If I had been a colonel recalled from a field command to plan and slave for some senior potentate, I would have enjoyed doing it for K for the same reasons his staffs appreciated him and were loyal: he earned his colonelcy and his generalship by decisive plans and actions, loyalty to friends and fellows, and a keen mind properly bent to the joint struggles and joint end. I now must go read the other biographies of this author I previously had never heard of, but I can greatly recommend this comprehensive and professionally thorough biography including the hallmarks of a well-done one: just have a read at his tremendous sources, including archives and private letters, a great lot of endnotes, bibliographies including manuscripts and newspapers of the times. Even if you care not for the man, you can get a good view of the critical and shaping times across continents between 1880 and 1916, the year K was killed with his staff upon the mined cruiser traveling to Russia for important allied meetings.

This thing is huge with a ton of primary sources woven into dialog and indented paras to show us not only what they did but how these critically placed people felt about each other: this book tells the events and more, but rather than making me put it down every three pages - I would look up after twenty and realize I'm late for something.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eminent Victorian, March 28, 2006

By 

jjlaw "jjlaw" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace (Paperback)

K was a military guy with a big moustache and similar ego whose speciality was occasionally slaughtering thousands of locals in one of the many outposts of the outsize British Empire (Sudan, Egypt, India). His training as an engineer brought a new dimension to military thinking - the importance of logistics (surely only K could have thought it possible to build a railway in order to bring his army to the battlefield). In this he was a prototype for modern military commanders like Rommel and perhaps Patton. When many predicted at the beginning of WW1 that it would be over by Christmas, he said three years. He's a hard guy to read (or even like) but if you wish to know more about his professional career this book has it all.