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.

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. They trace the changes in the staff that influenced British military strategy and subsequent operations on the battlefield.