General Sir David Fraser has enjoyed distinguished parallel careers as a soldier, novelist and historian. His memoirs provide an insight into literary, intellectual and military life in 20th century Britain. His perspective, as a serving soldier and writer, set him at odds with the prevailing hearty/aesthete dichotomy of that time and may yet serve to force us to revise our picture of the mid-20th century army as anti-intellectual, hidebound and narrow-minded.
