Wellington: The Iron Duke [Paperback]

Richard Holmes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2003

Richard Holmes, highly acclaimed military historian and broadcaster, tells the exhilarating story of Britain's greatest-ever soldier, the man who posed the most serious threat to Napoleon. The Duke of Wellington's remarkable life and extraordinary campaigns are recreated with Holmes' superb skill in this compelling book. Richard Holmes charts Wellington's stellar military career from India to Europe, and in the process, rediscovers the reasons Queen Victoria called him the greatest man the nineteenth century had produced. Combining his astute historical analysis with a semi-biographical examination of Wellington, Holmes artfully illustrates the rapid evolution in military and political thinking of the time. Wellington is a brilliant figure, idealistic in politics, cynical in love, a wit, a beau, a man of enormous courage often sickened by war. As Richard Holmes charts his progress from a shy, indolent boy to commander-in-chief of the allied forces, he also exposes the Iron Duke as a philanderer, and a man who sometimes despised the men that he led, and was not always in control of his soldiers. Particularly infamous is the bestial rampage of his men after the capture of Cuidad Rodgrigo and Badajoz. THE IRON DUKE is a beautifully produced book, complete with stunning illustrations and colour plates. Richard Holmes' TV series to accompany THE IRON DUKE will be lavishly constructed in four parts, and filmed on location in Britain, India, Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In Holmes' surprisingly revisionist view, Wellington emerges as far better soldier than he was a loveable individual." -- The Times

About the Author

Celebrated military historian and television presenter Richard Holmes is famous for his BBC series 'Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War'; 'Wellington: The Iron Duke'; 'Battlefields'; 'War Walks' and 'The Western Front'. He is the author of many bestselling and widely acclaimed books including 'Firing Line', 'The Western Front', 'Sahib', 'Redcoat' and 'Tommy' '. He is general editor of the definitive 'Oxford Companion to Military History'. He taught military history at Sandhurst for many years and is now Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science. His biography of the Duke of Marlborough is published by HarperCollins in 2008. He lives near Winchester in Hampshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK (February 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007137508
• ISBN-13: 978-0007137503
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Quality Popular Biography of the Iron Duke, March 12, 2005

By 

D. S. Thurlow (Alaska) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Wellington: The Iron Duke (Paperback)

Richard Holmes's "Wellington - The Iron Duke" is a well-written survey of the active life of the First Duke of Wellington. In just 300 pages, Holmes presents a balanced, even nuanced view of a man who was both the quintessential military professional and a complex human being. Through Holmes' efficient prose, we see Wellington as an extradinarily dedicated soldier who mastered his profession in ways few of his contemporaries did, yet who sometimes paid a price on campaign for his insistence on micromanaging his armies. Wellington comes across as a remarkably honest and duty-bound public servant; as a young man, he was also relentlessly ambitious, and as an older man, sensitive about his military reputation.

Holmes provides some useful insights. He suggests that exhaustion and strain were responsible for Wellington's uncharacteristically poor performance at the Siege of Burgos in 1812. Holmes examines the academic dispute over Wellington's relationship with the Prussians during the Waterloo Campaign; he tellingly notes Wellington's responsibilities to his alliance partners and to the British Government and finds that he served both. Holmes acknowledges Wellington's extramaritial activities but resists the urge to obsess over them or to indulge in psycological speculation.

Serious students of the Duke and of the Napoleonic Wars will find no new scholarship here; indeed, Holmes readily acknowledges his debt to earlier works such as Elizabeth Longford's exceptional biography and Jac Weller's battlefield narrative trilogy. Holmes has provided an accessible biography for the general reader, supported by well-chosen quotes from the Duke' contemporaries and by a nice selection of illustrations.

This book is highly recommended to the general reader with an interest in the man and the era.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book about a great man, warts included, July 2, 2003

By 

physics student "visviva" (St. John's, Newfoundland Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wellington: The Iron Duke (Paperback)

The book aims to be realistic - the fog of
war is foggy indeed, and Wellington sometimes makes mistakes. The
casualties at Waterloo are appalling, and the battle almost lost.
Lt.-Col. Trant of "Sharpe's Rangers" fame actually appears, an excellent soldier but "the most drunken dog there ever was" in Wellington's words.

Unusual is the emphasis on Wellington's Indian campaign and on the
Peninsular War - the period of Sharpe's Rangers is the most important in
the book. The Battle of Waterloo is treated as somewhat of an
afterthought, as I suppose it was (if Nap had won it would have been a
very different matter, of course). There are a number of good plates,
including a daguerrotype of the Iron Duke himself in his mid-70s, looking
buth shrewd and oddly sympathetic.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wellington: warts and all!, January 12, 2004

By 

Ian Mackechnie - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wellington: The Iron Duke (Paperback)

This is one of those books that once you take it up, you can't put it down!

Its balanced treatment of Wellington the man, the military man and the politican, has meant that this is not just a book about Waterloo.

One is left with the impression that Wellington was a great man, with equal weight given to his 'greatness' and his 'humanness'.

Very readable and highly recommended.