David Stirling

They say there are old soldiers and bold soldiers but very few old, bold soldiers. Well, Tim Spicer is pretty old, and there’s no question about his boldness. In a long life spent running towards, rather than away from, danger and adventure, he has consistently put the daring into derring-do. I discovered this when working for him in Iraq in 2004, just as al-Qaeda was doing its worst. He never seemed happier than when terrorists were aiming an RPG at him. To his unflappable soldierly credentials and a buccaneering ability to make a fortune from private security we must now add a late-career talent with the pen. In A Dangerous Enterprise (2021) he told the story of the little known secret second world war flotilla operating from Devon.

‘The boy Stirling is quite mad, quite, quite mad. However, in a war there is often a place for mad people.’ Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was referring to David Stirling, the man largely credited with raising the Special Air Service (SAS) in the summer of 1941. Myth has always surrounded the formation of the SAS and one of the most abiding legends is that it was down to one man alone, David Stirling, whose L Detachment of six officers and 60 men grew into 1SAS. Gavin Mortimer’s vivid and meticulously researched book, 2SAS, does a good deal to redress the balance. It acknowledges the importance – too long overlooked – of David’s eldest brother, Bill Stirling, who was to command 2SAS, and other remarkable men who were among the SAS’s founding fathers.