Acknowledgements

History-book writing is a collaborative exercise and cannot be undertaken successfully without the help and support of a number of people and institutions. To that end, firstly, I should like to thank the staff at the National Archives (NA) in London. The NA holds the main collection of Kitchener Papers and writing his biography would simply be impossible without access to this finely-housed collection. Similarly, the Kitchener letters that form part of the larger India Office archive kept at the British Library (BL) in London are an invaluable source for a biographer. I thank the staff of the BL's Asian & African Studies Reading Room for their excellent service, as well as those in the Western Manuscripts Reading Room. I should like to thank also the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for its related manuscript sources, especially the Asquith Papers. The National Portrait Gallery in London is a treasure-trove of photos for a subject like Kitchener so my thanks go to the staff there for providing many of the images reproduced in this book. My thanks go also to the Broome Park Golf and Country Club in Kent – the site of Kitchener's former country estate – for allowing me to wander round the property at will and to take photographs, one of which is reproduced in the pages that follow.

In the service of writing this book I travelled to India in order to see up-close some of the places where Kitchener lived and worked during the first decade of the twentieth century when he was Commander in Chief of the Army in India. In particular, I would like to thank the administration and staff of the Indira Gandhi Medical College hospital (‘Snowdon Hospital’), Wildflower Hall Hotel, and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (formerly Viceregal Lodge), all of which are located in Shimla, the one-time ‘Queen of the Hill Stations’ and as such the former summer capital of the Raj, for the privilege of seeing around their premises and grounds. In Ireland, I would like to thank Patrick and Philomena Galvin for showing me around the site of Kitchener’s childhood home, Crotta House, near Kilflynn, Co. Kerry.

My sincere thanks go also to Dr Lester Crook and Jo Godfrey, senior history editors at I.B.Tauris, and to Sophie Campbell, production editor, for expertly guiding the commissioning and publication of this book, my third with I.B.Tauris. All three experiences with them have been excellent.

Equally, I would like to thank Tyndale University College in Toronto, where I teach, especially its recently retired dean, Dr Douglas Loney, as well as his successor, Dr Barry Smith. Research funding and a sabbatical were readily forthcoming from Tyndale over the past couple of years and the book could not have been written without such stellar help. Also, best thanks to my outstanding colleagues in the Department of History at Tyndale, Professors Eric Crouse and Ian Gentles; and to my students, past and present, for their intellectual curiosity, and for making the content of the history courses that I have been teaching now for a number of years always seem fresh.

As usual, and happily so, my greatest debt is to my wife, Rhonda, and our two children, Claire and Luke, who sometimes wonder why quite so many visits to the UK are required in order to complete my books. But over time they have gotten used to the routine of a British historian in the house whose work requires regular trips across the Atlantic. For this, and much else – including the work Claire did preparing a comprehensive bibliography of works on Kitchener – I am very grateful.