Having written acclaimed accounts of Tobruk and El Alamein, Field Marshal Lord Carver has used newly available first-hand historical resources—including the recently released war diaries and private papers of General Sir Neil Ritchie, the predecessor to Montgomery in command of the Eighth Army—to reassess the story of the British campaign in the North African desert. History shows that several key figures in these battles were wrongly criticized, and Carver sets the record straight.