Kitchener: Hero and Anti-Hero

by C. Brad Faught

Overview

Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Earl Kitchener of Khartoum (1850-1916) is one of the most important figures in the history of the British Empire. Beginning as Royal Engineer in the 1870s he would end his career over forty years later as Secretary of State for War - the iconic figure of World War I recruitment posters. In between he became both the most famous British soldier in the world during the peak period of European imperialism, and a celebrated and sometimes controversial pro-consul and administrator. At his death in 1916 he had literally become the 'face' of the British war effort. This new biography offers a timely and modern evaluation of a still disputed and complex military man of empire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784533502
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/28/2016
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

C. Brad Faught is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Tyndale University College in Toronto. A graduate of the Universities of Oxford and Toronto, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Into Africa: The Imperial Life of Margery Perham; The New A-Z of Empire (both published by I.B.Tauris); The Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and Their Times and Gordon: Victorian Hero.

Table of Contents

Preface viii

Acknowledgements xi

List of Illustrations xiii

1 An Irish and Continental Childhood and Youth, 1850-67 1

2 The Making of a Surveyor-Soldier, 1868-82 9

3 In Egypt and Sudan, 1882-92 29

4 Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, 1892-8 55

5 Omdurman, Fashoda, and Khartoum, 1898-9 78

6 The South African War, 1900-2 101

7 India and Afterwards, 1902-11 138

8 Egypt Again, 1911-14 177

9 Supreme British Warlord, 1914-16 190

10 A Watery Grave and a Contested Reputation: 1916 and Beyond 241

Chronology 254

Notes 256

Bibliography 286

Index 296

Editorial Reviews

a clear and readable biography with a coherent chronology …the author deals fairly and deftly with some of the more notably contentious episodes in Kitchener’s life…this highly enjoyable biography achieves its stated purpose and provides a suitable and balanced re-appraisal of Kitchener.”

Andrew Winrow

Written in a very clear and readable style and based upon thorough and excellent research. The various and often dramatic phases of Kitchener's rapid rise to national and international fame are chronicled with great skill, shrewdness and sensitivity... one of the best biographies of Kitchener to be written so far.

Denis Judd