Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO

A short while ago I included in the blog a fictional cover for the equally fictional memoirs of the, well you get the picture, fictional Brigadier Ben Ritchie Hook. The cover was based on that for the actual biography of the very real de Wiart on whom the character of Ritchie Hook was previously based by Evelyn Waugh.

de Wiart is on the far right

I downloaded a copy of de Wiart's autobiography on to my kindle and am about a third of the way through. He is currently in command of an infantry battalion in the trenches and has already lost several body parts, mostly in action against the Mad Mullah. Normally I would wait to review it until I had finished it (hint - it will undoubtedly appeal to all wargaming readers of this blog; Russian spambots and Elkie Brooks' greatest fan perhaps less so), but the BBC website today contains a brief article on the man which I thought I would draw to your attention.

For completeness can I also mention that anyone who hasn't read Waugh's 'Sword of Honour' trilogy in which Ritchie Hook features heavily should also add that to their reading list. If there is a better work of fiction that came out of World War II then I'd like to hear about it (maybe 'Catch-22'?) and it is surely Waugh's masterpiece. The television series starring Daniel Craig overly condensed the story although the BBC radio adaptation of a couple of years ago wasn't at all bad. I've never seen the television version starring well known wargamer Edward Woodward.