The chief

The great military commanders of the Second World War, the Eisenhowers and the Montgomerys, have had their biographers, and the great events of the war have been analyzed and argued over. Still, not everything has been said. One of the great gaps in our understanding of the period has been the lack of a serious study of Field Marshal Wavell, who commanded the British forces in the North African desert and was later Viceroy of India.

This is a military biography with a twist, for Wavell did not win great victories. In- deed, the reader may feel that Wavell’s ca- reer was more tragic than glorious. In what is certainly the definitive treatment of the subject, Ronald Lewin has captured the essence of a complicated and important figure and set him sharply against the great Figures that surrounded him: Churchill, Montgomery, Rommel, Wavell is treated with sympathy but also dispassionately.

The Chief is, in fact, a brilliant case study in the exercise of power, particularly as it exposes the conflicts be- tween Churchill and Wavell, between the politician with his eye on the big picture and the field general faced with the day-to-day exigencies of a war that was not going well.