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Rating: 
Summary: shows the imperfection and the achievements
Review: I read a review on here and chose not to read this book - boy how stupid I would have been and what I would have missed! I got this book and am beginning the final fourth: this is a comprehensive biography and a competent one. I'll say that again farther down, but this author has done a tremendous job with a remarkable life in an important time, a man at the center of many events and doings forming parts of our world and helping to define the 'our time' of those who came before us, which we inherited.
Firstly, this author devotes an entire appendix to the sexual question, and whether or not a reader agrees with the conclusions the issue is quite addressed.
Now that is remarked, time to move on: one does not have to be a detractor, busting the myths of good deeds of a life, to be a biographer, in fact most have some reason for writing on a person, often a fan or at least appreciating some things that personage did: this author has given us a very full and balanced account of a man who, while far less than perfect, gave what was needed during some difficult and climaxing British times: keen confidence and loyal leadership. K was most certainly not perfect, and Pollock shows how K made many mistakes, sometimes noticing the thing himself and regretting, and sometimes not noticing then hearing a friend point it out, then agreeing and regretting. He was great at deciding and issuing orders yet not remarkable at chatting, no manoeuvering manipulator here; not great at the rubbing elbows and chatting or curbing his tongue in subtle areas; his biggest problem came from errantly speaking his mind then finding himself used by a consumate and macchiavellian politician. K was no brilliant politician and made mistakes; but he came into his own in the Sudan command and knew how to run the India Army, or any army; he also made a huge difference in realizing what the first year of the great war would require and getting that going in the face of great opposition. The man did not lack personal and political courage.
But this author has done the main job of a biographer, showing how this man came to do the achievements and leadership he did at critical times by showing the personality's development and viewpoint: showing from where and how he came, and how those he knew and events he experienced affected and formed him to be the shy yet confident man he became, learning by trial and fire as he went, with flawed facets and yet a rare magnetism and decisiveness others required, enjoyed and benefited from. If I had been a colonel recalled from a field command to plan and slave for some senior potentate, I would have enjoyed doing it for K for the same reasons his staffs appreciated him and were loyal: he earned his colonelcy and his generalship by decisive plans and actions, loyalty to friends and fellows, and a keen mind properly bent to the joint struggles and joint end. I now must go read the other biographies of this author I previously had never heard of, but I can greatly recommend this comprehensive and professionally thorough biography including the hallmarks of a well-done one: just have a read at his tremendous sources, including archives and private letters, a great lot of endnotes, bibliographies including manuscripts and newspapers of the times. Even if you care not for the man, you can get a good view of the critical and shaping times across continents between 1880 and 1916, the year K was killed with his staff upon the mined cruiser traveling to Russia for important allied meetings.
This thing is huge with a ton of primary sources woven into dialog and indented paras to show us not only what they did but how these critically placed people felt about each other: this book tells the events and more, but rather than making me put it down every three pages - I would look up after twenty and realize I'm late for something.
Rating: 
Summary: Is this historical writing or fan mail?
Review: Lord Kitchner has an apologist in Mr. Pollock. If you are expecting an objective historical account, I do not recommend this book. The lack of objective thought makes one suspect that the book was written during the Victorian period and not at the start of the twenty-first century. Examples abound, but I will site two as representative. Rumors that Lord K was a homosexual because he never married and was very found of young adjutants are dismissed by Mr. Pollock as a modern bias that would make anyone fond of young men and not a womanizer a homosexual. That is not historical writing from sources, it is the opinion of the author in the nature of conjecture. Secondly, Mr. Pollack dismisses the Murant incident during the Boer war as a subject for "fiction" writers, after admitting that in a suspicious case Kitchner signed the execution papers and then made himself indisposed to appeals for clemency. Why did K do that Mr. Pollock? To answer that, by historical research is your task as a historian. Instead of research we have evasion of the issue. This blot on Lord Kitchner's reputation cannot be dismissed by an objective historian via relegating it to the dustbin of history, with a comment that the incident is a good one for fiction writers.
Rating:
Summary: Is this historical writing or fan mail?
Review: Lord Kitchner has an apologist in Mr. Pollock. If you are expecting an objective historical account, I do not recommend this book. The lack of objective thought makes one suspect that the book was written during the Victorian period and not at the start of the twenty-first century. Examples abound, but I will site two as representative. Rumors that Lord K was a homosexual because he never married and was very found of young adjutants are dismissed by Mr. Pollock as a modern bias that would make anyone fond of young men and not a womanizer a homosexual. That is not historical writing from sources, it is the opinion of the author in the nature of conjecture. Secondly, Mr. Pollack dismisses the Murant incident during the Boer war as a subject for "fiction" writers, after admitting that in a suspicious case Kitchner signed the execution papers and then made himself indisposed to appeals for clemency. Why did K do that Mr. Pollock? To answer that, by historical research is your task as a historian. Instead of research we have evasion of the issue. This blot on Lord Kitchner's reputation cannot be dismissed by an objective historian via relegating it to the dustbin of history, with a comment that the incident is a good one for fiction writers.
Rating:
Summary: A life of enviable adventure.
Review: Though it is now possible to recognise Kitchener as the architect of a British victory that he did not live to see in the Great War, he has often come across as a stiff, remote and unimaginative figure. This first volume of a two-part biography goes far to change that impression and portrays Kitchener as a sensitive man of high intelligence, capable of great affection, loyalty and kindness. His apparent shyness is here revealed to have been a result of chronic eye problems, which he was largely successful in covering up, while a serious facial wound left him with an almost invariably severe impression. A delightful photograph in this book, which is new to this reviewer at least, showing Kitchener beaming as he is reunited in Britain with the Cameron Highlanders who provided his personal escort in South Africa, reveals a totally different side to the conventional picture. This biography makes for easy reading - and is a suitable companion piece to Mr.Pollock's excellent earlier work on that other great Royal Engineer, Charles Gordon, Kitchener's idol. The life here described is one of enviable adventure, admirable courage and daunting responsibility. Kitchener emerges not just as an ideal engineer and manager, but as a man of considerable daring and initiative, with an uncanny ability to pick up languages quickly, to understand alien cultures, and to evoke loyalty from peoples of widely differing racial and religious backgrounds. His diplomatic skills are also seen to be of a high order, as exemplified by his handling of the Fashoda incident and his efforts to bring the Boer War to a negotiated settlement. Somewhat of a surprise is the extent to which strong but unostentatious religious convictions underpinned his behaviour. A virtue of this biography is that Kitchener is portrayed as a man of his time, and judged as such, without projection of twenty-first century values on him - typical being the manner in which speculations by later biographers as to possible homosexuality are robustly dismissed in an appendix. This is one of those rare biographies that one would have wished to have been considerably longer. One would have welcomed considerably more detail on the more minor battles in the Sudan, such as Firket and Um Diyaykarat. This small gripe apart, this book is a splendid treat for aficionados of the Victorian period and one looks forward with impatience to the second volume.
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