Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780002113304
ISBN number: 0002113309
Label: Collins
Manufacturer: Collins
Page Count: 608
Printing Date: January 31, 1972
Publishing house: Collins
Sale Popularity Level: 3857246
Studio: Collins
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Stephen Roskill's three-volume 'Hankey, Man of Secrets' is essential for the deep history of Britain's role in World War I but will be tedious going for most readers. Naval historian Roskill never expended much effort on narrative, being primarily a documentarian. His life of Maurice Hankey is rather Victorian and Germanic in that respect, like the two-volume 'Life and Letters' biographies of 19th century worthies -- except that Hankey's full life requires three volumes.
The key period was his service as secretary of the Dardanelles Committee, a vexatious, backstabbing period. Only a historian as intensive as Roskill could adequately deal with this intricate episode. Nevertheless, this is not a complete history of the Dardanelles but of Hankey's role within that period.
Roskill's method is primarily to present extensive extracts from documents, linking them together with brief commentary. What is missing is the personality of Hankey, who was the perfect secretary, and so anonymous. Hankey's personal papers were available but not enormously helpful, and the books Hankey himself wrote were circumspect.
The least satisfactory part of this biography was, to me, the question that most interested me: How did Maurice Hankey get his position at the apex of British politics? Like Churchill, who shunted Hankey aside in World War II, Hankey had rather sketchy formal education. It is difficult to imagine either one of them being given the chances they had in the American system, so intimately connected with university education.
Records are scanty, so in Roskill's life, Hankey is on one day an artillery officer in the Royal Marines -- not ordinarily a springboard to high office in England -- and a few weeks later he is intimately ensconced in the highest affairs of empire. Had he been a duke's son, like Churchill, it might have been less surprising. As it is, the transformation seems almost magical.
'Hankey, Man of Secrets' will appeal only to professionals and to a particular kind of fan of history. For them, it is indispensible.
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