A Close Shave

'Slim captures the humanity and humour of soldiers, in a series of stories which hark back to the age of the empire.' Saul David, author of Victoria's Wars.From the pen of the man who would become one of Britain's greatest generals of the Second World War. Edited and curated by bestselling historian Robert Lyman, A Close Shave is a special collection of stories by William "Bill" Slim which were first published during the interwar years under a pseudonym. This selection of stories are a mixture of personal accounts of military service together with a range of non-military subjects written for the popular magazines and newspapers of the period. The collection A Close Shave“When Bob’s wife tells him that she hates his new moustache, Bob rebels. He likes the new luxuriant growth on his upper lip. He considers that it gives him sophistication and panache. He is determined to keep it. Until, that is, he realises that it might just place him in very hot water with the constabulary in a case of mistaken identity.”‘I’ve carried Um-ul-Baqq at the Point of the Bayonet’ Whistling bullets, dust, sand, fleas and an Austrian doctor all play a part in this first-hand description of battle against the Turks in Mesopotamia in 1918 written when Slim was a subaltern in the Warwickshire Regiment. Control Tower Travelling to the aerodrome to meet her daughter flying in from Paris, Mrs Lannington learns much more than she ever anticipated about a notorious French burglar called Monsieur Vitele. A Family in Love, at War In the chaos of civil war, Karl is forced to recognise that force might win battles, but it cannot win love. The Burglar Robert Tamplin is the sort of immoral creature who would quite readily rob his elderly aunt. When caught in the act, will the man who caught him reveal his turpitude? Recommended for fans of Jim Corbett, John Buchan, Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling.Field Marshal Sir William (‘Bill’) Slim (1891-1970) was the man who led the famous Fourteenth Army to victory over the Japanese in India and Burma in 1944 and 1945. Lord Louis Mountbatten described him in 1951 as the man who ‘more than any other living person won the victory in Burma.’ He wrote his best-selling Defeat into Victory in 1956, which tells the story of this long war between 1942 and 1945. He became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1949, the first Indian Army officer to do so. After being Governor General of Australia between 1952 and 1959 he died in 1970.Born in New Zealand in 1963 Dr Robert Lyman was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He spent twenty years as an officer in the British Army. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Robert Lyman is the author of numerous acclaimed works of military history, including Slim, Master of War and A War of Empires.'Field Marshal Viscount Slim – Uncle Bill to his troops – was not only Britain’s finest general of the Second World War but a wonderful writer and story teller too. From humble origins and without any private money, as a young officer he supplemented his modest army pay by writing short stories under the pen name of Anthony Mills. Most of these tales were based on fact and gave an insight into that wonderful organisation the Indian Army of the Raj, the world’s largest all volunteer army.