This domination of the army by the aristocracy also mean that the service learned little from the experience of war in the Crimea (1854-1856), the Balkans (1877-1878), and the Far East (1904-1905), ...

so that Britain went into World War I little better prepared for a protracted land war than it had been 60 years earlier. A valuable book for anyone interested in how superpowers can fail to ...