ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores some of the representations over the course of the twentieth century of the two paramount British military figures of the First World War: Herbert Horatio Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War during the first two years of the conflict; and Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces on the Western Front from the end of 1915 to the conclusion of the war. It examines the post-mortem reputations of Kitchener and Haig because they tell us something about the ways in which the perceptions of war and its leaders have changed in British culture over the course of the twentieth century. The book explores the twentieth-century historiographical debate about Haig, arguing that the manner in which Haig was discussed through constant evocations of his 'character' was responsible for this connection between the man and the meaning of the war.
