The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener – Reginald Viscount Esher – First UK Edition, 1921

Author: Reginald Viscount Esher [Reginald Baliol Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher]
Title: The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener
Publisher: John Murray, London
Date: 1921
Edition: First UK Edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: xvi, 219pp
Illustrations: Photographic Frontispiece and Plates
Binding: Original Publisher’s Blue Cloth, Lettered in Gilt
Condition: Very Good Plus
Provenance: Neat Pencil Ownership Name Dated 1921
Stock Number: 004217
Location: Bookroom

Description

A very attractive first UK edition of Reginald Viscount Esher’s The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener, published by John Murray in 1921, an important early study of Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener and the political and military tensions surrounding his service as Secretary of State for War during the First World War. The volume opens with a photographic portrait of Kitchener and examines not only his career and public reputation, but also the pressures, rivalries and administrative difficulties surrounding his wartime role.

Reginald Viscount Esher

Reginald Baliol Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher (1852–1930) was one of the most influential behind-the-scenes figures in late Victorian and Edwardian public life.

He served in a succession of important advisory and administrative roles and was closely connected with the monarchy, senior politicians and the machinery of government. His position gave him unusual access to decision-makers and to the private workings of British political life. Esher was also deeply involved in questions of military reform and administration. That background made him particularly well placed to write about Kitchener’s relationship with the War Office, Cabinet and wider political establishment. Unlike a purely retrospective military biography, The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener is shaped by Esher’s proximity to many of the personalities and institutions involved.

Lord Kitchener

Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850–1916) was one of the most famous British military figures of his generation.

His reputation had been established through imperial campaigns in the Sudan and South Africa, and by 1914 he possessed an immense public profile. At the outbreak of the First World War he was appointed Secretary of State for War, becoming responsible for the rapid expansion of the British Army. His name became inseparable from the mass volunteer force popularly known as Kitchener’s Army. Kitchener’s famous recruiting image — “Your Country Needs You” — became one of the enduring symbols of the conflict, although his actual wartime role was considerably more complex than the popular image suggests. The book is concerned with precisely that complexity.

Kitchener as Secretary of State for War

Esher’s central subject is Kitchener’s wartime position and the difficulties he faced within government. Kitchener was a soldier operating at the highest political level during a conflict whose scale and demands were unprecedented. He was required to oversee recruitment, armament, organisation, strategy and the creation of a vastly expanded army while dealing with Cabinet colleagues, civil servants and senior military officers. His extraordinary prestige gave him unusual authority, but also generated tension. Esher examines these pressures and the conflicts surrounding Kitchener’s methods, personality and political position.

The book is therefore not simply a life of Kitchener. It is also an account of the administrative and political stresses created by the First World War.

The Meaning of the “Tragedy”

The title The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener refers to more than Kitchener’s death.

Kitchener died on 5 June 1916 when HMS Hampshire, carrying him on a diplomatic mission to Russia, struck a mine west of the Orkney Islands and sank. His death immediately became one of the most dramatic episodes of the war. But Esher’s concept of tragedy is broader. The book considers the gap between Kitchener’s immense public reputation and the increasingly difficult realities of his position within wartime government. His strengths as a commander and organiser did not always translate easily into the political and bureaucratic environment of Whitehall. The work therefore presents Kitchener as a figure of enormous achievement whose final years were marked by frustration, conflict and a diminishing degree of control over the machinery he was nominally directing.

Condition

First UK Edition, 1921. Octavo. xvi, 219pp. Original publisher’s blue cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine. Photographic frontispiece and plates.

The binding is nice and tight. The blue cloth is slightly spotted, but remains bright, clean and attractive overall. The gilt spine lettering is clear and strong. The pages and illustrations are generally very nice and clean. There is a neat pencil ownership name dated 1921, providing contemporary provenance.

The book is in very good plus condition overall.

Stock Number: 004217 Location: Bookroom

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