Review by:  
Robert Whitaker
University of Texas at Austin
April 2008
© Copyright 2006-08 British Scholar. All rights reserved.
Book of the Month
Captain Professor:  A Life in War and Peace
Michael Howard, (New York:  Continuum, 2006), 232 pages

Reading the memoirs of someone you admire can be an uncomfortable experience.
You approach the book with a set of lofty assumptions that you hope will be
substantiated. Too often, however, these assumptions prove unfounded. Even
worse, your hero may turn out to be someone who, once you get to know them, you
dislike. Thus, it was with a great sense of trepidation that I began to read Captain
Professor, the memoirs of historian Sir Michael Howard. And though I found that my
assumptions were indeed baseless, I discovered that the reality of Howard’s life was
better than I imagined.  

Born in London in 1922, Michael Howard was raised by parents Edith and Geoffrey
in upper middle class surroundings. Howard developed a love of history while in
Upper School at Wellington, a place where he “was able to drop all the useful
subjects that [he] found so tedious…and concentrate on the useless ones [he]
enjoyed” (33). This love of useless subjects took him to Christ Church at Oxford
where he encountered the likes of E. M. Forster, Raymond Mortimer, A. J. P.
Taylor, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Howard’s education was interrupted, however, by
the Second World War. Enlisting as an officer in the Coldstream Guards, Howard
saw action in Africa and Italy. According to the author, his wartime experience
exemplified Clausewitz’s notion of the friction of war or the difference “between war
in reality and war on paper” (74). Though he would earn a Military Cross for his
bravery at Salerno, Howard spent most of the war on his back battling malaria. “My
war,” the author concludes, “had been as protected as my childhood.” He returned
home “still immature, unmarked by serious responsibility or suffering” (123).  
 
Howard completed his studies at Oxford in self-described mediocre fashion, failing
to win a post-graduate fellowship in Christ Church. While this failure initially left him
downtrodden, Howard now considers it “the best thing that could have happened”
(127). “Had I remained at Oxford with a fellowship,” the author writes, “I would have
led a dull, useful, comfortable life, not written a line, and never been heard of
beyond the confines of my college” (127). Instead, Howard became an assistant
lecturer at King’s College, London, during which time he co-wrote a regimental
history of the Coldstream Guards with John Sparrow. From this first foray in military
history, Howard learned of the primary problem facing the subject: an uneven and
contradictory body of evidence which led to incomplete and uninspired descriptions
of battle. He began to work toward a solution to this problem and others when he
accepted the position as professor of war studies at King’s in 1953. Taking a year’s
leave to develop a deeper knowledge of the subject, Howard came to realize that
military history “was more than the operational history of armed forces. It was the
study of entire societies” (145). This concentration on the relationship between war
and society allowed Howard to broaden the appeal of military history and led to the
publication of his most famous work, The Franco-Prussian War, in 1961.

The success of this book, along with his commentary on nuclear weapons,
established Howard as one of Britain’s foremost military experts at the height of the
Cold War. He came to play an important role in British defense policy as a member
of Chatham House and later as one of the founding members of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies. Eventually he served as a member of the Ministry of
Defence and finally as a close advisor to Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher thought
enough of Howard to appoint him Regius Chair of Modern History at Oxford in
1980, replacing Trevor-Roper. Though honored by the selection, Howard felt
overwhelmed by the position and gladly left the post in 1989 to become the chair of
Military and Naval History at Yale. New Haven presented the Captain Professor with
a welcome opportunity to abandon his “outworn life” in Britain, and his time in
America seems to have rejuvenated the scholar for continued work (212).

While the details of a life well-lived make Captain Professor a memoir worth
reading, the real strength of the book lays in Howard’s commitment to honesty. The
author maintains a frank, conversational tone throughout, never attempting to hide
from the reader behind a carefully constructed façade. With absolute sincerity,
Howard discusses his homosexuality as well as his moments of cowardice during
the war. He also provides candid portraits of the people in his life, including a
description of his mother’s bouts with depression. Though undoubtedly difficult to
write, these sections encourage the reader’s confidence and inspire their interest.
Despite his honesty with the reader, however, Howard has difficulty being honest
with himself. Howard continually disregards his achievements and portrays himself
as an interloper whose modest contributions are the result of luck rather than
brilliance. This type of self-critique shows itself most noticeably when Howard
discusses his Ford Lectures. The author admits that before receiving the invitation
to lecture, he “had genuinely not realized that [British academics] took [him]
seriously” (204). He goes on to describe the book that resulted from the lectures,
The Continental Commitment, as “of some value to undergraduates, sixthformers,
and indeed the general public, until it was replaced by more thorough surveys and
was deservedly forgotten” (204). As someone who has read and enjoyed The
Continental Commitment within the past year, I would say that modesty does little to
hide the excellence of Michael Howard.