A superb double volume biography that will transform our view of Kitchener and the First World War. In Part I, (previously published alone as The Road to Omdurman) we see a youngster of integrity and kindness, whose shyness meant he was often misunderstood. At miraculously low cost in both lives and money, he leads the reconquest of the Sudan, and lays down the principles, which for nearly 60 years, made it one of the best governed lands in the British Empire. The new Part II, Saviour of the Nation, opens with Kitchener arriving in the Indian Empire as Commander-in-Chief and his posting to Egypt as proconsul. When the Great War broke out he said it would last at least three years and that he must raise a New Army of three million men.
Pollock argues that despite his untimely death, Kitchener was the architect of allied victory, and that his planning was masterly. The aftermath of Mons, the Munitions Crisis, Gallipoli, the Kut disaster, the stalemate on the Western Front and Kitchener's vision of a peace of reconciliation are all recreated in a dramatic narrative history.