Annual Booklist 2025 : Major General (retired) Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter
Evelyn Webb-Carter was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards in 1964, serving in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and retired from the Army in 2001 as Major-General commanding the Household Division and GOC London District. He has served as Chairman of the Waterloo Association since 1997, and founded the Waterloo200 organisation that coordinated the events to mark the bicentenary of the battle. He was made a Fellow of the Society for Army Historical Research in 2025.
Donald R Morris, The Washing of The Spears (Jonathan Cape, 1965: Pimlico, 1994)
I read this book when at Sandhurst and it left a great impression. I have many books on the campaign, notably by Ian Knight and Ron Lock, but none in my view match the panoramic view which Donald Morris gives us. Years later I rode the campaign over ten days and was hosted at one stage by the late Daivd Rattray who told the story of Isandlwana one moonlit evening around the campfire on the very spot.
Richard Homes, Riding The Retreat (Jonathan Cape, 1995: Pimlico, 2007)
I hope I am allowed this. Richard wrote this account of the Mons campaign having ridden the route in the precise time scale of the Retreat. I had met Richard at the Higher Command Course at the Staff College, and he told me of his plan to ride the Retreat. I landed up accompanying him and the book tells the story of the campaign, promotes a view on where Europe was going at the time, and our story with all the shenanigans of equine dramas.
Mungo Melvin, Manstein (Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 2010)
Guderian and Rommel get far more exposure in British-written books on the Second World War. Manstein is a most interesting person and soldier who carried the larger weight of generalship on the Eastern Front. His own biography written after eight years of imprisonment is of course subjective. Mungo’s book is not only fascinating but truly objective.
John Hussey, Waterloo, The Campaign of 1815 (Two Vols.; Greenhill Books, 2017)
As Chairman of the Waterloo Association for 25 years I could hardly omit a book on Waterloo. Whilst running the bicentennial commemorations I was aware of an avalanche of books being published on the battle but I only read a fraction of them. But one or perhaps the pair written by John Hussey I found the most comprehensive from the political, operational and tactical perspectives. It has excellent maps to guide one through the campaign too.
Earl Wavell, Other Men’s Flowers (Jonathan Cape, 1952: Pimlico, 1992)
This is a desert Island one. I have always had Lord Wavell’s anthology of poems not far from my side. In spare moments in Ireland and elsewhere I found dipping into this wonderfully selected set of poems very relaxing. In the hurly burly of life we so often forget to read let alone remember poetry. To chime with the theme of military history perhaps “The Good Fighting” section qualifies. “Into Battle” by Julian Grenfell always rings a bell: “The horses show him nobler powers; oh patient eyes, courageous hearts.”
I once followed the route taken by San Martin the famous liberator of Argentina and Chile over the Andes. Although there are biographies of him, Bernardo O Higgins, and Simon Bolivar there is no definitive military history of the campaigns in South America during the wars of liberation (at least not in English).