Sir Herbert Plumer stood out as an archetypal Colonel Blimp — smart to a fault, white hair, white moustache, pot-belly. But his appearance belies the fact that he was one of the best-performing and best-regarded officers on the Allied side. Plumer's crowning glories were the attack on Messines Ridge in 1917 and his successful implementation of the 'bite and hold' strategy that contributed so much to final victory. Plumer destroyed all his papers, but the author has meticulously researched this biography, and has written a lucid account of this undeservedly neglected hero which throws fresh light on generalship on the Western Front.
