Correlli Barnett (born June 28, 1927 in Norbury, Surrey) is an English military historian, who has written also on the United Kingdom's industrial decline. (Some entries on this page have been duplicated on August 1. ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Norbury is a place in the London Borough of Croydon, on the border with the London Borough of Lambeth and the London Borough of Merton. ... Surrey is a county in southern England, part of the South East England region and one of the Home Counties. ... Military history is the recording (in writing or otherwise) of the events in the history of humanity that fall within the category of conflict. This may range from a dispute between two tribes that come to blow over a plot of land, to a world war. ...
He is the author of The Desert Generals, a book that attacked the perceived cult of British Field MarshalBernard Montgomery. It gave the viewpoints of his sacked predecessors as commanders in the North Africa campaign. Note: This article is about the military usage of the word marshal. For other usages, see the end of this article. ... Bernard Law Montgomery Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (November 17, 1887 - March 24, 1976) was a British military officer during World War II often referred to as Monty. ... The battle in the North African desert during World War II from 1940-1943. ...
Barnett's The Pride and Fall sequence:
The Collapse of British Power
The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation
The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities, 1945-50
The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future
The Audit of War is Barnett's best known work. In sum, the sequence describes the decline of British power during the twentieth century, a decline attributed by the author to a change in the values of England's governing élite from the late eighteenth century, and one which was encouraged by evangelical and non-conformist Christianity. He has been criticised for being overly-negative about Britain's war effort, with his emphasis on production inefficiencies, in the light of overall British victory. He also published Britain and Her Army 1509-1970, which is a truly masterful survey, marrying the political, the social and the military over the grand sweep of Britain's modern history
It was in 1972 that the military historian CorrelliBarnett wrote The Collapse of British Power, an excoriating polemic that blamed the public schools, bumbling amateur gentlemen, bolshie workers and an effete, all-inclusive liberalism for the country's decline and fall.
Barnett makes selective use of the public records of the time, but he has a useful chapter on the Treasury's proposal, in 1952, to float the pound under Operation Robot, as a way to resolve the country's increasingly insuperable economic problems.
Barnett may sneer at liberalism in its widest sense, but that is what made this country such an inspiration to the world in 1940 and beyond.
CorrelliBarnett CBE (born June 28, 1927 in Norbury, Surrey) is an English military historian, who has also written extensively on the United Kingdom's industrial decline.
Barnett claims the British statesmen of the eighteenth century were men "hard of mind and hard of will" who regarded "national power as the essential foundation of national independence; commercial wealth as a means to power; and war as among the means to all three".
The British national character, Barnett argues, underwent a profound moral revolution in the nineteenth century which came to have a deep effect on British foreign policy; foreign policy was now to be conducted in a reverence of highly ethical standards rather than an "expedient and opportunist pursuit of England's interests".
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