In 1977 Brian Bond, who has died aged 89, published a careful and nuanced analysis of the military thought of Sir Basil Liddell Hart, a dominant figure in British military studies who had died seven years earlier. It was a particular challenge for him.
He owed much to Liddell Hart, who had inspired and encouraged him while he was still a student at Oxford University. They both lived in the village of Medmenham in Buckinghamshire, and Brian had been a regular visitor to Liddell Hart’s house, met his distinguished guests and been given access to his library and papers. Yet while he always acknowledged his debt, and gave due recognition to his mentor’s many attributes, Brian was too good a historian not to be aware of Liddell Hart’s flaws, especially his tendency to force history “to yield the appropriate lessons”.
Two reviewers of Liddell Hart: A Study of His Military Thought, keen to see the myth punctured, enthusiastically picked up on this aspect. Kathleen Liddell Hart, a jealous guardian of her husband’s reputation, blamed Brian, and their relationship never fully recovered.
This determination to stay close to the evidence and assess it carefully, even when it led to difficult or controversial conclusions, was a hallmark of Brian’s approach to his craft. It was even apparent when he wrote a delightfully candid memoir as his final book, Military Historian: My Part in the Birth and Development of War Studies, 1966-2016 (2018). Along with his achievements, he also recounted, sometimes in painful detail, disappointments and slights.
The achievements were nonetheless substantial. Born in Marlow, three miles from Medmenham, Brian was the son of Olive (nee Sartin) and Edward Bond, who after RAF service in the second world war was Liddell Hart’s gardener.
While his parents had left school at 14, Brian got to grammar school, Sir William Borlase’s in Marlow, and then, after national service in the Royal Artillery (1954-56) in West Germany, to Worcester College, Oxford, where in 1959 he gained a history degree. His first employment was as a schoolteacher, but already he was undertaking research at King’s College London, under the supervision of the military historian Michael Howard, to whom he had been introduced by Liddell Hart, which led to an MA (1962).
He got his first academic jobs as a tutor at Exeter University (1961-62) and a lecturer at Liverpool University (1962-66) before returning to King’s in 1966 as a lecturer in the newly formed department of war studies. There he stayed, in 1986 becoming professor of military history, which he remained until retiring in 2001. When I arrived in 1982 as head of department I know (because he told me) that he was frustrated not to have been appointed, yet we soon developed a close working relationship. I was impressed from the start by his commitment to military history and the high standards he set for his students as well as for himself.
Until Howard, military history had struggled to establish itself as a “proper” subject for universities, and was often viewed with suspicion as somehow glorifying war. Howard had shown how military affairs could be studied in a dispassionate and humane way, and with due regard for the contributions of other disciplines. Brian followed this approach.
Supervising over 50 research students during his time at King’s, running the fortnightly seminar on military history at the Institute of Historical Research, then with his presidency (1986-2006) of the British Commission for Military History, he played an essential part in encouraging the development and growth of the subject as a serious academic endeavour not only at King’s but also elsewhere in the UK.
Inevitably the field was shaped by the two world wars, and this was reflected in Brian’s work. Although his early research was on the army in Victorian times, he first addressed the second world war with a two-volume edition of Lt-Gen Sir Henry Pownall’s diaries (1972–74), then a study of Britain, France and Belgium, 1939-40 (1975). It was his analysis in British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars (1980) that fully established his reputation.
His interest in the first world war developed as much out of an interest in the way that it had been interpreted as in how it had been conducted, and how this had affected historical memories and cultural appreciations. This interest was reflected in his 2000 Lees Knowles Lectures, delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, published as The Unquiet Western Front (2002).
The two strands of his thought came together in his final academic work as the first world war’s centenary approached, Britain’s Two World Wars Against Germany: Myth, Memory and the Distortions of Hindsight (2014), in which he challenged the popular view of “the first world war as catastrophic and futile in contrast to the second world war as a well-conducted and victorious moral crusade”, arguing that in key respects Britain was more successful in the first than in the second.
Although some might feel that the revisionism went too far, Brian believed, correctly, that this was an important argument to make. Unfortunately a series of mishaps, including two floods at his house in Medmenham and difficulties with the publishers, meant that it did not get the attention he sought.
In Survivors of a Kind (2008) he explored works by 1914-18 veterans going well beyond Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. The Gulf war of 1990-91 spurred him to explore how the “quest for victory” is the key goal of armed forces once brought into action, and led to The Pursuit of Victory: From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (1996).
Brian could be grumpy, especially if he felt a speaker was being long-winded with a thin argument. But he was also witty, a cricket enthusiast, loyal friend and a devoted husband.
He married Madeleine Carr in 1962, and she predeceased him by two years.
• Brian James Bond, military historian, born 17 April 1936; died 2 June 2025
