Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in great condition. Pages in great condition. No notes or highlighting. Ex library but no stamps on pages other than cover pages. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> When Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb. the last British commander of the Arab Legion was dismissed by King Hussein of Jordan in March 1956 he was met by cheering crowds at London airport jostled by journalists and photographers feted as a national celebrity and knighted by the Queen. At the same time alarm bells were ringing in the Westminster corridors of power. Now that the man hailed as ‘The Uncrowned King of Jordan’ had been removed by the real one the mandarins in the Foreign Office feared that the delicate house of cards of Britain’s Middle Eastern policy would come tumbling down. They were right. Known throughout the Middle East as ‘Glubb Pasha’ he had arrived in what was then known as Transjordan in 1930 to control the Bedouin tribesmen and to bring peace to the desert areas. With the support of Abdullah the Hashemite king of Transjordan he used his previous experience of low-intensity counter- insurgency warfare in Iraq to turn the Arab Legion into an elite fighting force which helped to preserve British interests in a region so recently reshaped in the aftermath of the First World War. Glubb’s command of the Arab Legion during the desert campaigns against Axis forces in Iraq and Syria in 1941 confirmed his reputation as a fighting soldier and convinced generals like Wavell and Wilson that properly led Bedouin tribesmen could produce a disciplined army for the allies. Following the Legion’s victories in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 he remains the only leader of Arab forces to have won a decisive victory against the Israeli army Glubb emerged as a soldier-diplomat with a reputation which surpassed even that of Lawrence of Arabia. For the British he had become a bulwark against the Israeli expansionism and the growing demands of pan-Arab nationalist movements in Syria. Egypt and Iraq. (MP)