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Feb 2023

48m 12s

185 - Adrian Carton de Wiart

About this episode

In this episode, I discuss one of the most remarkable soldiers of the British Army, Adrian Carton de Wiart.

Belgium by birth, he would fight in the Boer War, lose an eye in the Somaliland Campaign, win a VC and lose a hand in First World War, command the British troops during the Norwegian Campaign of 1940, spend time as a POW for the Italians (where he escaped) and finish the war a Winston Churchill’s personal representative to Chiang Kai-Shek.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography described him thus: "With his black eyepatch and empty sleeve, Carton de Wiart looked like an elegant pirate, and became a figure of legend."

I am joined by Alan Ogden, author of The Life and Times of Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart: Soldier and Diplomat.

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