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Mad Mike: A Life of Brigadier Michael Calvert. By David Rooney. Barnsley, England: Leo Cooper, imprint of Pen & Sword, 1997. ISBN 0-85052-5438. Maps. Photographs. Index. Pp. viii, 211. 19.95.
This cannot have been an easy book to undertake. Brigadier Michael Calvert, D.S.O. and Bar, still very much alive as David Rooney wrote, had a career that peaked at thirty and was followed by decades of controversy, disappointment, and decline. Born in India in 1913, Calvert followed, briefly, a conventional path: public school, Woolwich, and a series of postings fairly typical of a Sapper subaltern of that era. In 1940, this came to an abrupt end. Drawn into unconventional warfare during the winter of 1939-40...