El alamein

To begin at the beginning: the title. ‘Unbeatable, Unbearable’ is supposedly Winston Churchill’s opinion of Bernard Montgomery – that in defeat he was the first, and in victory the second. Gary Mead acknowledges that it is merely ‘attributed’ to Churchill. According to the late Richard Langworth, the unrivalled curator of Churchillian wit and wisdom, it and the rather more grandiloquent ‘In defeat, indomitable; in victory, insufferable’ are widely bruited about but are not in the Churchill canon. Does it matter? We can be confident that the other major Allied figures of the second world war who dealt with Monty – Alanbrooke, Eisenhower and Ismay – would not have disagreed too much.

Keith Douglas is perhaps the best-known overlooked poet. He died following the D-Day landings in 1944, and his Collected Poems were published in 1951, followed by a Selected Poems in 1964. ‘Now, 20 years after his death,’ wrote Ted Hughes in his slightly puffy introduction to that volume, ‘it is becoming clear that he offers more than just a few poems about the war.’ There was a thorough and clear-sighted biography by Desmond Graham in 1974, followed in turn by further editions: another Collected Poems, prose fragments, a memoir, and his surprisingly boring letters. Yet Douglas continues to be the kind of poet older writers like to present with a flourish as an insider tip: oh, you must read Keith Douglas.