I remember reading a book entitled Deeds That Won the Empire at primary school. Mainly, it seemed to be about the slaughter of various groups of native races by the superior technology and organisation of the West, always personified by focusing on an intrepid leader called Carstairs or Hethington-Bloggs, or some such name. Even in the 1950s, the book had a desperately old-fashioned feel to it. This type of writing, one felt, could not last.

But it has. There is an ever-increasing volume of books that add up to not much more than that book I read so long ago. Historians need to contemplate this issue. Why is it that when the industrial and de-personalised nature of modern war has never been more apparent, publishers are issuing books that attempt to reverse this picture and to concentrate on what for want of a better word I will call ‘deeds’?