Table of Contents

Who are the Chiefs?; the quest for military efficiency without loss of political control - Cardwell, Carnarvon and Hartington, 1868-99; the rise and fall of the Committee of Imperial Defence - Elgin, Esher, Haldane and Churchill, 1899-1914; easterner "frocks" versus westerner "brass" - Asquith, Kitchener and Churchill, 1914-16; political dictatorship versus judgement - Lloyd George, Jellicoe and Robertson, 1917-18; the birth of Chiefs of Staff Committee - the ten-year rule and disarmament, 1919-33; appeasement and drift to war - the Chiefs versus the Treasury, 1934-39; Churchill's Chiefs - containing the threat, September 1939-December 1941; the triumph of the Combined Chiefs of Staff - the coalition war, 1942-45; towards a Ministry of Defence - victory over Japan to disaster at Suez, 1945-56; the Mountbatten era - Duncan Sandys to a unified Ministry of Defence, 1957-64; economic decline and defence retrenchment - Labour's defence reviews, 1965-79; strategic balance lost and regained - John Nott's review and the Falklands conflict, May 1979-June 1982; Heseltine makes his mark - from victory in the Falklands to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, July 1982-October 1989.