Wars and Shadows: Memoirs of General Sir David Fraser

General Sir David Fraser has had two careers: as one of Britain's most distinguished soldiers and then as one of our leading military biographers. His childhood passed in grand houses in London and Scotland, but he was the son of anything but conventional parents, who are sketched out in this book in all their bizarre and entertaining individuality. Fraser's accounts of becoming a soldier, the life of his regiment, and his role as a young officer in the Second World War, are brilliantly written classics of their kind. After the War he rose through the hierarchy (the acuteness of his mind earned him the nickname 'Fraser the razor') until he became GOC the British Army of the Rhine and Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff.