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Rating: 
Summary: The Founder of the SAS
Review: A major contribution to the early history of the SAS, this outstanding biography of Jock Lewes persuasively argues that he was the real founder of the elite British commando corps in World War II not David Stirling. Lewes had not only developed the concept of the corps but had begun training his men before he was joined by David Stirling. Lewes was a brilliant innovator, experimenting with early parachute techniques and creating the Lewes bomb, who was initially sceptical of enlisting Stirling. Written by his nephew, with access to family friends and unused private papers, the biography successfully argues its case without doing an injustice to Stirling. On the contrary, it shows that the ultimate success of the unit was due to a successful partnership in which the two men played distinct but essential roles. Stirling was crucial in promoting support for the formal adoption of the SAS among doubtful commanders at HQ. The biography reads like a good thriller maintaining suspense throughout. Well over half the book is devoted to the years before the war, beginning with his boyhood in Australia. There are memorable vignettes of Oxford in the 1930s, where Jock led the Oxford University Boat Club in its first victory against Cambridge in many years, and the Berlin Olympics. Jock emerges in these early chapters as a charismatic and visionary leader long before his founding of the SAS. "Jock Lewes" is a work of revision which will change the text book accounts of the origins of the SAS.
Rating:
Summary: The Founder of the SAS
Review: A major contribution to the early history of the SAS, this outstanding biography of Jock Lewes persuasively argues that he was the real founder of the elite British commando corps in World War II not David Stirling. Lewes had not only developed the concept of the corps but had begun training his men before he was joined by David Stirling. Lewes was a brilliant innovator, experimenting with early parachute techniques and creating the Lewes bomb, who was initially sceptical of enlisting Stirling. Written by his nephew, with access to family friends and unused private papers, the biography successfully argues its case without doing an injustice to Stirling. On the contrary, it shows that the ultimate success of the unit was due to a successful partnership in which the two men played distinct but essential roles. Stirling was crucial in promoting support for the formal adoption of the SAS among doubtful commanders at HQ. The biography reads like a good thriller maintaining suspense throughout. Well over half the book is devoted to the years before the war, beginning with his boyhood in Australia. There are memorable vignettes of Oxford in the 1930s, where Jock led the Oxford University Boat Club in its first victory against Cambridge in many years, and the Berlin Olympics. Jock emerges in these early chapters as a charismatic and visionary leader long before his founding of the SAS. "Jock Lewes" is a work of revision which will change the text book accounts of the origins of the SAS.
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