Customer Reviews

Life of Sir John Moore: Not a Drum Was Heard

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Despite the claims made for this biography there is hardly any new material in it. It is based mainly on the memoir of Moore by his brother, the 1923 edition of Moore's letters, and the 1904 edition of his Journal (i.e. not the original documents).

It is chock-full of inaccuracies, right from Page 2 where the author confuses Moore's father with his grandfather. Some are small - a sloop is called a frigate, a wainscot wall is described as "lath and plaster" and so on. But others are serious, such as the author's assertion (a key point in his assessment of Moore's character) that Moore may never have killed anyone himself. This is nonsense; both Moore's diary and his brother's memoir describe him doing just that. Day also describes an occasion when Moore's ship was attacked by a privateer, which he says had "most of its crew shot to pieces" as Moore's shipmates fought back. But the source says clearly that the privateer didn't attack but sailed away instead. The stirring battle Day describes is wholly imaginary.

The book is full of passages in quotation marks, but many are inaccurate, some of them so much so that they are only paraphrases of the original quotations.

Weirdest of all - although the author and the publisher's blurb both stress Moore's importance as a trainer of troops - his most important contribution to British military history, the creation of the British Light Infantry arm at Shorncliffe, just isn't in the book at all. The book simply leaves out the years in which Moore worked on his greatest achievement, skipping without comment straight from November 1802 to August 1806. So if you don't already know why Moore is important to the British Army, you won't find out from this book. Bizarre.

This new title by Roger Day, `The Life of Sir John Moore' provides the reader with an interesting view of a man who the author categorizes as "the classic tragic British hero". This is the first biography I have read of Sir John Moore although I have come across him in many previous books. The author's view of Sir John Moore differs from many other accounts, the most recent being in `The Peninsular War' by Charles Esdaile.

Regardless of these differences I found that the author's biography of Sir John Moore was well presented and a delight to read. His campaigns were covered in enough detail to allow the reader to form an opinion on the man and his achievements. The narrative runs to only 220 pages so it could not be considered an exhaustive study but more of a general overview of the man and his times. According to the publishers much of the primary research material has previously not been utilized.

Upon finishing the book I felt that Sir John Moore was a brave man who actually felt some responsibility towards his troops welfare and did all in his power as a leader to ensure that they were well looked after and used in an intelligent manner. At times it appeared that these concerns and his forward thinking, taking in the `bigger picture', did not sit well with both his superiors and politicians in London nor with some of his subordinates.

Once again I was amazed and disgusted to read of the political backstabbing and cover-ups conducted by some of the politicians at the time. This appears to be a constant thread throughout history, the soldiers doing the dirty work while the politicians find some way of appearing to be squeaky clean when things go wrong. Overall this is an enjoyable book and should find acceptance with those who have read little on the subject, a good primer for further reading.