Liddell Hart's Big Idea

Abstract

Basil Liddell Hart is the most influential military writer of the modern age, revered and reviled by three generations of strategists, armchair and armipotent. This article focuses on his master thesis, ‘The Indirect Approach’, in relation to another coinage of Liddell Hart's, ‘The British Way in Warfare’, a parallel gestation. Both concepts smack of the invented tradition; both continue to resonate. They are in every sense characteristic of their creator.