Wellington. The Years of the Sword

London England: World Books. Very Good/Good. 1971. 1st World Book Edition. Cloth. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Hardback Hardback. Mark to top edge. Slight foxing to end inside covers. Red cloth with gilt lettering. Wellington is the archetype of the stern silent Englishman dedictated to his duty. His posthumous nickname 'The Iron Duke' was hard earned on the battlefields of the Peninsular War. Yet, though he was remarkably free from the contradictions so often discovered in the very great, he had all the subtlety and variety of genius. The life of the Great Duke falls naturally into two parts, and in the first volume of her two-volume life, The Years of the Sword, the author covers his martial life that ended abruptly, when he was a handsome resilient forty-six, in the holocaust of Waterloo. After Waterloo, Wellington was never asked to fire another shot. This first volume shows the sensitive withdrawn child of Irish aristocrats pushed into the army as 'food for powder', stumbling his way through Flanders fields, an abortive love affair and the roistering banqueting halls of Dublin Castle to reach India at twenty-seven. There he made his name and, as Sir Arthur Wellesley, returned to England and marraige to Kitty Pakenham. Previous biographies have either concentrated on Wellington's victories or ignored his battles, sieges, tactics, strategy - all that brought him fame - to concentrate on his personal life. Lady Longford, who is the great-great-niece by marriage of Kitty Pakenham, has aimed at a comprehensive biography that will encompass all the aspects of Wellington's life to give the man in the round. She has visited the battlefields of the Peninsular War and of Waterloo, studied papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor and The Hague, and read Wellington's private papers at Apsley House, as well as other papers and journals, including his wife Kitty's hitherto unpublished diary and his own uninhibited correspondence with his brother William, both of which shed a vivid new light on Wellington's family life. Illustrated. 612 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions ,and all types of Academic Literature.) .