The first full-length appraisal of an incredible military career ranging from the War of 1812 to the First Opium War in China and well beyond
Military service over an unprecedented 55 years took Field Marshal Colin Campbell from the battlefields of the Iberian peninsula to the plains of India, via the West Indies, Nova Scotia, China, Java, the Balkans, and Russia. Wounded six times the first time at 20, the last when 65 years old he always led from the front, ever ready to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm. There wasn t a great power which he did not stand beside as an ally, or confront as a foe. He was in command at the most decorated battle in British history, earning 18 Victoria Crosses, and it was he who reconquered a subcontinent with an army Wellington would have thought sufficient for a reconnaissance-in-force. But Campbell s story is also a very personal one, the struggle of the son of a Glaswegian cabinetmaker who climbed all the way to the House of Lords."