From Private to Field-Marshal

No other title in British military autobiography can make quite the same claim.

William Robertson entered the 16th (The Queen’s) Lancers as a trooper in November 1877. Forty-two years later he became a Field-Marshal—the only British soldier to rise from the ranks to the Army’s highest rank.

His memoir carries the reader through the Victorian cavalry, commission into the 3rd (Prince of Wales’s) Dragoon Guards, intelligence service in India, the Pamirs and Chitral, Staff College, the South African War, the War Office and the reform of the British General Staff.

In August 1914 Robertson went to France as Quartermaster-General of the British Expeditionary Force. He sustained its communications during the retreat from Mons, became Chief of the General Staff in 1915 and, later that year, Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

From Whitehall he stood at the centre of Britain’s military direction during the Somme, the campaigns of 1917 and the great strategic disputes over the Western Front, manpower, coalition warfare and political control of military strategy.

His final commands included the Home Forces and the British Army of the Rhine.

“Sir William Robertson’s book is necessarily unlike any other which has been written.”

The Spectator, 22 October 1921

• Complete text of the London 1921 first edition, with Preface and Dedication
• Portrait frontispiece, sixteen photographic plates and the Pamirs route plan
• Publisher’s Foreword and Afterword, full author profile with portrait
• Career ladder from Trooper to Field-Marshal
• Regiments and staff service, British and foreign honours
• Essays on Intelligence, the War Office, the BEF and the High Command
• Full chronology, military glossary and a note on the 1921 text

First published: Constable and Company, London, 1921