Haig

by Duff Cooper

1935. First Edition. 402 pages. No dust jacket. Black cloth with gilt decoration and lettering. Pages are lightly tanned at the edges, with light foxing. Binding has remained firm. Boards have slight shelf with bumping to corners. Spine ends are a little crushed with light tanning.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1935

About the author

Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, GCMG, DSO, PC

Reviews

[Nick Pengelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not one of the great military biographies. Mr. Cooper writes very well - I found his own autobiography "Old Men Forget" absorbing. Unfortunately there is too little of Mr. Cooper's own writing in his two volume history of Douglas Haig. The Field Marshal kept detailed diaries of everything he did - far too much of the biography consists of verbatim entries from those notes, with "links" provided by Mr. Cooper. While Haig kept very good records of his actions, they were not written with an eye to publication, let alone with a view to telling a good story. Reading that he moved a battalion here and a brigade there, even that the German general who occupied Haig's room the previous night had committed an "unmanly act" in smashing the wardrobe mirror before leaving, quickly palls. I ploughed through volume 1 but, life being too short, I quailed before the equally sizeable volume 2.

[Errol Cavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the earliest biographies of Field Marshall Haig by a fine writer who had acess to, and made extensive use of, his subject's diaries. Many more Haig biographies have sprung up in recent years but this one is still worth reading.