The essays that comprise this collection examine the development and influence of the British General Staff from the late Victorian period until the eve of World War II.

Introduction - Brian Bond, military historian, Brian Holden Reid; planning for war in the final years of pax Britannica, 1889-1903, Halik Kochanski; towards a ministry of defence - first faltering steps, 1890-1923, John Sweetman; selection by disparagement - Lord Esher, the general staff and the politics of command, 1904-14, Ian F.W. Beckett; Lord Kitchener, the general staff and the army in India, 1902-214, Timothy Moreman; the British army, its general staff and the continental commitment, 1904-14, Hew Strachan; the general staff and the paradoxes of continental war, William Philpott; the Australians at Pozieres - command and control on the Somme, 1916, G.D. Sheffield; the British general staff and Japan, 1918-41, Philip Towle; J.F.C. Fuller - staff officer extraordinary, A.J. Trythall; an extensive use of weedkiller - patterns of promotion in the senior ranks of the British army, 1919-39, David French; the British general staff and the coming of war, 1933-39, J.P. Harris; a particularly Anglo-Saxon institution - the British general staff in the era of two world wars, John Gooch.