Saul David

I have never been more chilled, thrilled, shocked and excited — and from a literary point of view, nothing has made me feel more inadequate as a writer — than when reading the opening to Great Expectations, which is one of the finest passages I’ve ever come across. Screen adaptations can’t quite capture the atmosphere because the writing frees the imagination; it’s terribly difficult to do, and you often lose the beauty of the words. That is the passage for me. Saul David is a military historian of Victorian Britain The entrance of Magwitch Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.

At a time when the British Army is going through something of a crisis — plucked from the frying pan of Iraq only to be plunged into the fire of Afghanistan, with inadequate equipment, a lack of clear objectives, mounting casualties and dwindling public support — it might not appear to be the best moment to publish a history of the Second Service’s achievements since the days of Cromwell.