David Stirling: Founder Of The Sas: The Authorised Biography of the Founder of the SAS

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Mayne was one of the few men who had seen through Stirling and recognised him for what he was: an incompetent egomaniac. During World War 2 David Stirling constantly fought to have his ideas heard and but for some good fortune and some luck may never have suceeded. He was the son of Brigadier-General Archibald Stirling, of Keir, and Margaret Fraser, daughter of Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat (a descendant of Charles II). In the dark and uncertain days of 1941 and 1942, when Rommel's Afrika Korps was sweeping towards Egypt and the Suez Canal, a small group of daring raiders made history for the Allies. Stirling remained convinced that due to the mechanised nature of war, a small team of highly trained soldiers with the advantage of surprise could attack several targets from the desert in a single night.

In fact, Mayne did not receive that VC, and suspicions remain that Stirling used his contacts to deny his rival the ultimate military honour. At the same time Stirling was cultivating his contacts in the Iranian government and exploring the chances of obtaining work in Africa. He was linked, along with Denys Rowley, to a failed attempt to overthrow the Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 1970 or 1971. Under Stirling's leadership, the Lewes bomb, the first hand-held dual explosive and incendiary device, was invented by Jock Lewes. He has appeared at several literary festivals and he has also worked as an adviser for the National Army Museum for their 2018 exhibition about the history of Britain's Special Forces.

On crutches following a parachuting accident, he stealthily entered Middle East headquarters in Cairo (under, through, or over a fence) in an effort to see Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Command General Sir Claude Auchinleck.

He got involved in various shady schemes in Africa and other places, often involving former, and sometimes serving, SAS operators, including one to depose the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.

Yet as Mortimer dazzlingly shows, while Stirling was instrumental in selling the SAS to Churchill and senior officers, it was Mayne who really carried the regiment in the early days. In this gripping and controversial biography Gavin Mortimer analyses Stirling’s complex character: the childhood speech impediment that shaped his formative years, the pressure from his overbearing mother, his fraught relationship with his brother, Bill, and the jealousy and inferiority he felt in the presence of his SAS second-in-command, the cold-blooded killer Paddy Mayne. He had been captured by the Italians on his “most hare-brained scheme yet” — leading a small raiding party deep into enemy territory in Tunisia to attack lines of communication, reconnoitre the terrain and become the first Eighth Army unit to link up with the First Army advancing from the west. After the war, Stirling organised deals to provide British weapons and military personnel to other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, for various privatised foreign policy operations.

But Macintyre underplays Stirling’s indiscretion and fails to link it to the many other examples of the SAS commander’s recklessness and poor judgement of character. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Contrary to David’s tall tale of breaking into GHQ, it was Bill who ensured the memo proposing the formation of the SAS, which he had composed with David, landed on the right desks.American Jeeps, which were able to deal with the harsh desert terrain better than other transport, were cut down, adapted and fitted with Vickers K machine guns fore and aft.