ABSTRACT
Even so, the British need never have been defeated. What Churchill rightly termed 'the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history' need never have happened. Singapore and Malaya could have been saved, by better pre-war planning, by a timely truce to internecine warfare between the services, by adequate wartime re inforcements in planes and tanks, by more decisive leader ship on the spot and a true historical perspective at the centre of power, in London, in the two decades before.
