Great Contemporaries

“He’d never get us killed, stupid like…” Britain’s soldiers needed a general who wouldn't squander their lives. In Montgomery they found one.

Montgomery took command of the 8th Army at a time when Britain and Churchill desperately needed a victory. It was left to him to deliver it.

London has no statue of Claude Auchinleck, the man who stopped Rommel and the last commander of the Indian Army. Perhaps there should be one.

Auchinleck met seemingly impossible challenges in running up a noble record in North Africa and India during the Second World War.

A Canadian hero dear to Churchill, Stephenson deserved better than he received at the hands of biographers and a disbelieving public.

Churchill believed any obstacle could be surmounted, while Wavell prepared for the worst. Both traits had served Britain well.

Confronted with the seeming impossible in the Middle East, Wavell acquitted himself well and was promoted as often as he was sacked.

Lifetime friend and trusted collaborator, Louis Spears knew France and the French as few Britons, serving faithfully in peace and war.

Lady Violet: “He had no doubts about his star. He felt that he had been preserved through many perils in order to fulfil its purpose.”

Violet Asquith, 1906: “I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met…”

"All Mr. Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road to destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality. This is to say, that to be saved from himself. Mr. Churchill must be carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal." —Harold Begbie, 1921

Sinclair aging: “He did so much and worried so greatly on account of the boys who lost their lives…no wonder that he is now a war casualty.”