Pen & Sword publishes at the end of June Military Maverick: Selected Letters and War Diary of ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith, edited by Club member Lavinia Greacen. The book follows Greacen’s acclaimed biography of Dorman-Smith, Chink (‘deserves wide attention’ – Frederick Raphael, the Listener; ‘A dazzling triumph’ – Irish Times). Dorman-Smith, who was to appear in various guises in works by Ernest Hemingway, was responsible for several significant victories in the Second World War, but had only a brief hold on high rank because of the distrust and dislike he attracted. In the 1950s, he became an officer in the IRA.
From the blurb for the new book: ‘This selection from private letters and intimate war diary has the impact of a fresh ‘no holds barred’ autobiography. Dorman-Smith the man – flesh and blood – comes alive here on the page… Egotistical? Yes. Arrogant? Certainly. His own worst enemy? Perhaps. But Dorman Smith’s grasp of tactics and strategy was unsurpassed, as his exchanges with Basil Liddell-Hart demonstrate. Full of contradictions, he was externally reserved and inwardly super-sensitive. Growing up in style in Ireland and educated at public school in England, his religion was Catholic and he scorned any Anglo-Irish tag. His private life while rising up the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers proved colourful, while a brief dalliance with the IRA in the 1950s never endangered his vow of silence over the Enigma/Ultra secret.’