THE FIELD MARSHAL'S MEMOIRS

by John Masters ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 1975

Long but not large and faithful in its fashion, the life of the Field Marshal, otherwise known as the Old Man, Sir John Durham, G.C.B., G.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., passes in review while connecting up with present-day circumstances and revelations. As he explains himself to his granddaughter Caroline, an activist now in his custody, there is much to both indict and exculpate him, starting with the murder of his wife--""I have seen my hands red since 1914."" But the memoirs could be damaging to more than the Old Man, dealing as they do with an enforced suicide (that of one of his subordinates who conducted a one-man pogrom of an entire village), with a tit-fortat, favor-received promotion, with some missing Picasso lithographs of an erotic nature, with his lifelong love for Stefanie, and with the bombing of a town in the Balkans. Masters has arranged his story in such a fashion that one episode leads to another without superseding it in unemphatic interest. But his punctilious professionalism, old-fashioned to be sure, and his fine figure of a Field Marshal stays the course on which it's set.

Pub Date: Oct. 24, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION