This is really excellent stuff, though it is so sad to think how things could have been so different. I really do think Wrangel could have won, and - to use Churchill's phrase - strangled the Bolshevik baby in its cradle, thus saving Russia and the world from oceans of suffering. The treachery and betrayal of the British - largely due to my namesake and distant kinsman General George Milne - is particularly painful for me to read.

Wrangel's tone is fair, dispassionate, and measured. The military action is explained in clear and fascinating detail, especially the key battles around Tsaritsyn - which, of course, is the city which under its (temporary) name of Stalingrad would later be the scene for equally decisive conflict on a far greater scale. Political matters are given their due too - especially Wrangel's determined attempt to introduce democracy and land reform. Tragically, all his reforms were undone when the Bolsheviks won. One of the inevitable consequences of undoing all Wrangel's sensible agrarian policies and imposing Bolshevik policies instead was a devastating famine in which millions died - and yet that was only the first of many famines, all either caused or exacerbated by Bolshevism, which would poison the land for decades to come.