William slim defeat into victory5/12/2023 George Thompson in the London Evening Standard was as effusive in his praise: ‘He has written the best general’s book of World War II. It is told with a wealth of human understanding, a gift of vivid description, and a revelation of the indomitable spirit of the fighting man that can seldom have been equalled – let alone surpassed – in military history’. Bateman wrote in The Field: ‘Of all the world’s greatest records of war and military adventure, this story must surely take its place among the greatest. The book was instantly regarded as a classic memoir of high command. Since the end of the war, however, his exploits had become much better known, he had become the Chief of the Imperial General Staff after Montgomery in 1948 (the only ‘Sepoy General’ ever to do so) and was, at the time of publication, governor general of Australia. It was even more unusual given that Defeat into Victory was written by a general in the Indian Army, Bill Slim, who had been largely unknown to the British public during the war, commanding the 14th Army in far-off India and Burma. This was unusual, as only nine years after the war the public appetite for books on the recent war remained limited. In 1956 a military biography became a publishing sensation in the United Kingdom with the first edition of 20,000 selling out almost immediately.
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