Happy birthday, Lord Wavell
MANY Second World War military leaders are still admired, but few, I think, have been loved long after their deaths. One exception (indeed, the only one of whom I can think) is Field Marshal Lord Wavell (1883–1950). He was the commander who began to turn the tide in North and East Africa, and again in the East, where he was later the penultimate Viceroy of India.
He lacked the luck necessary to the greatest, first published in 1944. As a review noted, its worth ‘is that it is not a manufactured article, but the harvest of a life’s devotion’.
