Great British Commanders: Leadership, Strategy and Luck
- £18
- 20 Feb 25
- Salisbury Museum, 65 The Close, Salisbury
- 19:30
Professor Michael Clarke joins us to deliver a talk on the subject of his most recent book.
Military commanders matter. They win or lose battles, determine the outcomes of wars and often shape the history of nations. But they are also human individuals. This study of thirty-four British commanders, from Boudica to Bomber Harris, reflects on their personal stories, as individuals and warriors; as husbands and wives, libertines and lovers, strategists and shapers of British history over almost two thousand years. Short biographical essays, by military analyst Michael Clarke, cover a sweep of British history from the epic story of Queen Boudica in Roman Britain, to the generals, admirals and air marshals of the First and Second World Wars. Their styles of leadership, their strategies – or in some cases lack of them – are examined as they throw themselves on fortune. And the Gods of War decide whom will be lucky, and whom not.
Some commanders described here were obvious shapers of British history, like King Alfred, William the Conqueror, Henry V, Cromwell, Marlborough, Wellington or Montgomery. Some were unlucky and seemed beset by failure, like Walter Raleigh, Sir John Moore or General John Gort. Others are less well-known as significant commanders; like Lady Aethelflaid of Mercia, the Empress Matilda, the ‘greatest knight’, Sir William Marshal, or Cuthbert Collingwood who served with Nelson at Trafalgar. All have fascinating stories. Their experiences are compared in two final chapters that draw from unique interviews with a number of living British commanders who reflect on the ‘eternal verities’ of command but also the new conditions of twenty-first century warfare.
Professor Michael Clarke is a defence and security analyst and author. He was the Director General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) from 2007 to 2015. Prior to that he was Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London, the founder of its Centre for Defence Studies and then its International Policy Institute, and Deputy Vice-Principal responsible for research development at KCL. He has taught international relations and security studies in a number of universities and remains a Visiting Professor at King’s College and also at the University of Exeter, where he is associate director of its Strategy and Security Institute. He is an alumni and Fellow of the University of Aberystwyth, and of the Royal College of Defence Studies. He remains a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI. He has been a specialist advisor to a number of Parliamentary Select Committees and served on both the Prime Minister’s National Security Forum and the Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel.
