Plumer

First World War Generals tend to have dubious reputations and in group photographs of the High Command on the Western Front, one figure stands out as an archetypal Colonel Blimp - smart to a fault, white hair, white moustache, pot-belly. This was Sir Herbert Plumer.

But his appearance belies the fact that he was one of the best-performing and best-regarded officers on the Allied side. He was famously thoughtful of his men and sparing of their lives. Though he never got on with Haig (Plumer had, as an examiner, given Haig low marks at Staff College) and although Haig considered removing him, Plumer proved indispensable during the great German offensive of March 1918.

Plumer's crowning glories were the attack on Messines Ridge in 1917 and his successful implementation of the bite and hold strategy that contributed so much to final victory.

Lord Plumer of Messines, as he became, destroyed all his papers, but the distinguished Historian Geoffrey Powell has meticulously researched this biography, and has written a lucid account of this undeservedly neglected hero which throws fresh light on generalship on the Western Front.