Few battles or campaigns have been so fought over in print as the Gallipoli one of 1915-16, largely perhaps because so many political reputations were involved. And, in fact, the commander of the British land forces on the peninsula, Sir Ian Hamilton, is almost a forgotten man; it is Churchill's political eclipse which is best remembered. As First Lord of the Admiralty he had pushed hard for the storming of the Dardanelles, and when warships tried this and failed, it became a major land-and-sea undertaking which sucked in men, ships and armaments. Hamilton did not have the measure of his task, and his subordinate commanders were often inept, but he had been given the job by Kitchener without even an operations plan, and he and the Navy were expected to muddle through without either of them knowing who was the boss. The Turks, braced by German officers and German planning, fought bravely and stubbornly under the 35-year-old Colonel Mustafa Kemal (later to become his country's modernising dictator); it was their contribution which decided the whole campaign. British military planning showed up best in the final evacuation, which was a model of secrecy and good organisation. Many heads rolled at home, including Churchill's, but the greatest casualty was Kitchener, who never recovered his old authority and was already a discredited figure when he was drowned in a torpedoed ship several months later. A good and precise account of a confused event.