Awarded the Military Cross in the Second World War, the author recounts how between battles he befriended the young film director Franco Zefirelli. His account of beating the Germans out of Italy with Bishop Simon Phipps and the ballet critic Richard Buckle is hilarious. This memoir gives insight into the history of Britain in the post war years.
Michael Howard's ancestry, part Quaker, part German Jew, made him unpromising material for a commission in the Brigade of Guards. The three years he spent with his regiment were equally inappropriate perparation for the university chairs that he went on to hold at London, Oxford and Yale. In this autobiography he describes how these varied strands in his life came together. First there was a childhood in a world of privilege almost as remote from today as is that of the Roman Antonines. Then there came war service in Italy, a mixture of terror, tedium and Lucullan enjoyment. Finally, he was to persue an academic career in which he would pioneer the study both of war as an aspect of 'total history' and of international relations in the nuclear age. In addition to holding the Regius Chair of Modern History at Oxford he was to play a leading role in founding both the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the world-famous Department of War Studies at King's College London. His works (some translated into sizxteen languages) have him the Duff Cooper Prize,the Wolfson History Prize and the Chesney Gold Medal of the Royal United Services Institute. He ended up as a Fellow of the British Academy, a Companion of Honour and a member of the Order of Merit. So the discordant elements in his background and experience eventually harmonized very well.
Professor Sir Michael Howard was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. Amongst his most celebrated books are The Franco-Prussian War, War in European History and The Invention of Peace.
"All the qualities of powerful exposition, extraordinary insight and concision that adorn Howard's other books can be found in this, possibly his last book, as well as a haunting elegiac tone. But Michael Howard might still feel the urge to write. Let us hope so."
