Monday Book: A Dandy and a Fine Historian ALCHEMIST OF WAR: THE LIFE OF BASIL LIDDELL HART BY ALEX DANCHEV, WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, Pounds 25

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"THE TOSCANINI of military historians," as one admirer called him, Basil Liddell Hart was England's Clausewitz, and the apostle of the Blitzkrieg.

In his writings, above all in the masterpiece Strategy: the indirect approach, Hart explained the essence of war in the 1940s - speed, mobility, the importance of tanks - years before Rommell and Patton put the precepts into operation.

He was a particular influence on the great German Panzer commanders, Guderian and Nanstein, and lost a lot of brownie points with the British Establishment for championing them after 1945, on the dubious grounds that they were merely professional soldiers.

In many ways, Hart …