Book Review - The Little Field Marshal by Richard Holmes

 The Little Field Marshal: A Life of Sir John French by Richard Holmes

London: Cassell, 2005 (first published 1981)              ISBN 0304367028

Who has heard of Sir John French now? Virtually no-one, and yet at his peak he commanded the British Army on the Western Front at the beginning of World War One. This after a storied career in the cavalry, where he fought in Sudan and most famously in the Boer War (where he made his name), and stints as Inspector-General of the Army and Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS). Richard Holmes' book is a thorough look at both the personal and military sides of a complex man who generated loyalty and disdain in almost equal measure.

French in many ways was not the typical cavalry officer of the late Victorian era. He didn't come from a privileged background, and in fact transferred to the army from a burgeoning naval career. He was a serial womanizer which quite often got him into trouble in his early years, and led to a long estrangement from his wife and his children. His passionate nature was something that surfaced again and again during his career; several times he threatened resignation to get his way on various issues.

French's first time in battle was during the campaign to relieve General Gordon in Khartoum, when he commanded a troop of cavalry against the Dervishes. He carried himself well, and this led to him becoming an important commander during the Boer War, during which he became a hero after leading several brisk cavalry actions against the Boers. He was a cavalryman through and through, very much a believer in the role of the cavalry to both reconnoitre, and to take advantage of any breakthroughs by the other commands. These tactics worked well in South Africa, but were useless in France a decade and a half later.

That intervening decade and a half is for me the most interesting part of the book. French went to work modernising the army as he saw it - in some ways visionary in imagining how it was to be deployed in a Continental war, and in some ways quaintly reactionary in his steadfast refusal to countenance the cavalry giving up their lances (to become, as he saw it, mere mounted infantry - a fascinating part of that debate was that Erskine Childers, of Riddle of the Sands fame, wrote a book opposing French's ideas).

It was during this period that French came up against the limit of his abilities. A good tactical commander of cavalry, he could not effectively make the leap from that level to the broader job of CIGS. He had no feel for, liking of, or skill at the staff work that was required to make the most effective use of large forces of troops. He was fortunate in South Africa that he had Haig under his command, who was an excellent staff officer (and a close friend until their falling-out in 1915). French was the type of officer that liked to lead from the front and leave the staff work to others.

This in many ways was to bring about his downfall in 1915 - he failed to grasp that industrialised warfare required an industrialised approach to logistics, manpower distribution and planning. He wasn't up to the task, but as Holmes points out it is unfair to judge him too harshly for the reverses of the British early in the war, as nobody really knew what the new warfare looked like. French was too optimistic about the ability of troops to attack, and couldn't take the long view of some of his colleagues, yet when he was sent back to England to command the Home forces, he had enough vision to pave the way for the creation of the RAF, as well as keeping up the numbers of trained troops for the Front.

French was Anglo-Irish in descent, and always loved Ireland. He had a part to play in the Curragh Incident, where again he didn't cover himself in glory as far as the politicians were concerned - French had a tin ear for politics, as well as for money (he was perennially broke). In 1918 he was sent over to Ireland to become Lord Lieutenant, to try and quash the incipient rebellion that bubbled through the country. French flattered himself that he understood the Irish, and thought that Sinn Fein was not actually a popular movement. He favoured military control, but felt he had not enough troops to enforce it. Once again he couldn't read the political tea-leaves and was on the wrong side of most of the decisions taken during his time there.

It was an adventurous life, and one that Holmes captures well. He has a lot of sympathy for French and is prepared to go into bat for him when necessary, but is not afraid to criticise his decisions and actions when required.

The best way to sum up the man is to quote from the final paragraph of this book - "French was not a great general. He was a brave man and a good cavalry leader, and cared deeply about his profession. But in many respects he never transcended the nineteenth century, and his attempts to solve the tactical and strategic conundrums of 1914-15 were fatally marred by his undisciplined intellect and mercurial personality. Yet he should not be allowed to sink, disdained, into oblivion. Even those who knew him warts and all agreed that, whatever his shortcomings as a tactician, strategist, or indeed politician, 'French, in the sacred fire of leadership, was unsurpassed...'"

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Ulysses by James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce - the corrected text edited by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior and with a new preface by Richard Ellman - Student's edition

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986    (First published 1922)                        ISBN 0140084274


Ulysses.... that monument of twentieth-century literature in English; a monument that has spawned hundreds of books, many academic careers, and no doubt sold many copies that have sat in bookshelves as unread signifiers of the owners intelligence. Which in many ways is a shame, because it is just a book, a novel: yes, a difficult and at times obscure novel, but also a funny, moving, and exciting one.

This is the second time I have read this book, and on the whole, I have enjoyed it more the second time around, reading just for pleasure, and not study. This time around I have registered much more the sheer enjoyment Joyce has in language itself and telling stories. In Leopold Bloom Joyce tried to create the everyman for the twentieth-century, and to a large extent he succeeded. Bloom is trying very hard to be the modern man, with his adherence to science, order, and proper behaviour. However, owing to his Jewishness he will never be accepted as truly Irish, tolerated rather than a part of the brotherhood (his freemasonry also setting him apart from most in Catholic Ireland). We see clearly during the passage of 16 June 1904 how his own situation makes Bloom sensitive to the trials of others who are not in the mainstream of society: his response to the slings and arrows he receives is to emphasize the importance of love - 

"But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.
— What? says Alf.
— Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred"

And Bloom symbolises that throughout the book, especially when saving Stephen from himself at the end of the night. Of course Bloom is not a perfect man. He is unfaithful to his wife (who is also unfaithful to him), he is a failure at the "business" of life, not a success in his work, and unable to make a mark in any other way on society. Yet he is truly the hero of Ulysses, and the reader warms to him in all his goodness, foibles and follies.

Even though many of the references Joyce makes to Dublin and Irish history may go over the modern reader's head without a guide, one can still get the sense that Joyce is both reminiscing with love on his home town and also making fun of much of what the Irish see as important in themselves. Like all colonized peoples they labour under a foreign yoke, which in Ireland's case is masked with culture. Stephen is more cultured than the English he despises, yet he also despises much that Ireland has given him as well. Joyce it would seem has as little time for the Fenians as he does for the English. Bloom is in fact a man of the world, although he is quick to declaim his Irishness.

The way Joyce structured the novel was indeed revolutionary at the time, and has had a huge effect on the nature of writing since then. While he had already tried a stream-of-consciousness approach in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he takes it much further in this work, trying to capture every fleeting thought as it flies past the brain. It is of course impossible to really do so, but both the first episode and the last are wonderful attempts at it. In between Joyce toys with every literary trope, from newspaper articles to Irish sagas to romance novels.

And to do so while describing the peregrinations of a nobody through his day - it opens up the epic in the everyday, the hero in the humble. That someone like Leopold Bloom can be the centre of such a poem gives hope to us all.

The result is a fascinating melange: like many great novels, there are for every reader I'm sure, moments of boredom. The beauty of Ulysses is that, for every reader I'm sure, those moments are counterbalanced by others of amazing, brilliant, and breathtaking writing. A true masterpiece, raising the most ordinary of men to the status of hero, counterpointed with the heroine of Molly Bloom, it is not a book that should be just left on the shelf unread. I'll write no more, as brains more powerful than mine have said more profound things about this book: I would just add - read and enjoy!

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell