B. H. Liddell Hart - Life and Career

Life and Career

Born in Paris, as the son of an English Methodist minister, Liddell Hart received his formal academic education at St Paul's School in London and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he became an officer in the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and saw action on the Western Front. Liddell Hart's total time in combat measured some seven weeks over a period of two years before the Army downgraded him to "light duties" in 1916 due to the after-effects of gassing Transferred eventually as Inspector General of Training to the British Armies in France via various appointments in the United Kingdom training volunteer battalion (4th-line units), he contributed to the post-war official manual of Infantry Training published in 1920. After the war he transferred to the Army Educational Corps.

In April 1918 Liddell Hart married Jessie Stone, the daughter of J. J. Stone – who had been his assistant adjutant at Stroud – and their son Adrian was born in 1922.

Liddell Hart retired from the Army as a captain in 1927 (after being placed on half pay from 1923 because of two mild heart attacks in 1921 and 1922, probably the long-term effects of his gassing), and spent the rest of his career as a writer. He worked as the Military Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1925 to 1935, and of The Times from 1935 to 1939. Later he began publishing military histories and biographies of great commanders who, he considered, demonstrated greatness because they illustrated the principles of good military strategy. His subjects included Scipio Africanus Major, William Tecumseh Sherman and T. E. Lawrence.

On 4 September 2006, formerly secret MI5 files revealed MI5 suspicions of leaks of the plans for the D-Day landings, and that Liddell Hart had known all the details three months before the landings took place, discussed them, and had even prepared a critique, entitled Some Reflections on the Problems of Invading the Continent, which he circulated amongst political and military figures. His previous criticism of the direction of the fighting in World War II raised further suspicions, even of German sympathies, although most modern biographers accept Liddell Hart's defence that he had worked out the plans for himself rather than had them leaked to him. Winston Churchill demanded Liddell Hart's arrest, but MI5 instead placed him under surveillance, intercepting his telephone calls and letters.

Shortly after World War II Liddell Hart interviewed or debriefed many of the highest-ranking German generals and published their accounts as The Other Side of the Hill (UK Edition, 1948) and The German Generals Talk (condensed US Edition, 1948). Later Liddell Hart was able to convince the family of Erwin Rommel to allow him to edit the surviving papers of the German field marshal into a form which he published in 1953 as the pseudo-memoir, The Rommel Papers.

The Queen made Liddell Hart a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours of 1966.