David Stirling: Founder Of The Sas: The Authorised Biography of the Founder of the SAS

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Among her biographies are: Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man, The Astors: Story of a Transatlantic Family, The Romanovs, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune and Great Marlborough and His Duchess. The first operation of the new SAS was to steal from a nearby well-equipped New Zealand regiment various supplies including tents, bedding, tables, chairs and a piano. This essential difference in ethos is, I would suggest, partly down to Stirling and his character flaws which have been exposed, for all to see, in Mortimer’s excellent myth-busting biography.

David was poor with firearms, and his strange decision-making, leading to poor operational outcomes on pointless raids he insisted on carrying out, did not endear him to Mayne and other soldiers under his command.These hit-and-run operations eventually proved Stirling's undoing; he was captured by the Germans in January 1943 having been dubbed "The Phantom Major" by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. By bidding on, or purchasing this item, you are agreeing to us sharing your name and address details with that 3rd party supplier to allow us to fulfil our contractual obligations to you. The histories we were all exposed to in the years after WW2 were almost all written by members of this class who thought there was nothing wrong with their god-given right to command, irrespective of actual ability.

Thread by thread, Mortimer unpicks the myth of Stirling’s life and war service that the subject and his fawning admirers had so carefully constructed, both during and after the war. But Stirling was a poor soldier and an aloof man, whose incompetence was soon exposed in early SAS operations. His biographer Alan Hoe disputed the newspaper's disparaging portrayal of Stirling as a right-wing ' Colonel Blimp'. Her book about her own experiences as a journalist from 1936-42, Looking for Trouble, has recently been re-issued by Faber Finds.In 2002 the SAS memorial, a statue of Stirling standing on a rock, was unveiled on the Hill of Row near his family's estate at Park of Keir. I let him come reluctantly … I resented the strength of his persuasion and despised a little his colossal confidence. He got involved in various shady schemes in Africa and other places, often involving former, and sometimes serving, SAS operators, including one to depose the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

In two raids in December 1941 Paddy Mayne destroyed 51 enemy aircraft, while Stirling's attempts to blow up enemy planes or ships ended in embarrassing failure.In mid-1970s, Stirling became increasingly worried that an "undemocratic event" would occur and decided to organise a private army to overthrow the government.