It finally gives justified credit to Bill Stirling, Paddy Mayne, and others – not least the influence of the Long Range Desert Group, another one of the ‘private armies’ that sprung up in North Africa.

Stirling was released from captivity in April 1945 and on arriving in Britain he radioed a message to the SAS, then fighting in Germany, saying that he was back and raring to go: "Hope to come out and visit you soon. He even added a couple of inches to his height, stating that he was 6ft 6in and thereby surpassing his brother Bill's 6ft 5in. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

He founded the Capricorn Africa Society, which aimed to fight racial discrimination in Africa, but Stirling's preference to a limited, elitist voting franchise over universal suffrage limited the movement's appeal. In 1984, when Stirling gave the address at the opening of the new SAS base in Hereford — predictably named Stirling Lines — he repeated many of the myths and failed to mention either his brother or another early pioneer, Bill Fraser. Sir Archibald David Stirling DSO OBE (15 November 1915 – 4 November 1990) was a British officer in the British Army and the founder and creator of the Special Air Service (SAS). Drafted into the Scots Guards at the outbreak of the war, he soon wound up at Bill’s Commando training school, where Bill quickly learned ‘what the Guards had known for several months: David Stirling was indolent and temperamental, a disruptive influence’.

His biographer Alan Hoe disputed the newspaper's disparaging portrayal of Stirling as a right-wing ' Colonel Blimp'.Gavin's other interest is sport and one of his books is The Great Swim, the story of the race to be the first woman to swim the English Channel. He also had a rare talent for self-promotion, which led to his name becoming familiar to Winston Churchill, after Stirling recruited his son, Randolph, into the SAS. Bill preferred to stay in the background and let his younger brother lead the new unit, but he had a say in selecting some of the SAS officers. As a freelance journalist he has contributed articles to a diverse range of magazines and newspapers, including the Observer, the Guardian, History Monthly and Esquire. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.

An early recruit to SOE, it was Bill Stirling who first understood the importance of excellent fieldcraft and training for irregular forces. Stirling explained his plan to Ritchie, immediately after which Ritchie persuaded Auchinleck to allow Stirling to form a new special operations unit. 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. Here, Mortimer rehabilitates Mayne, painting a more rounded picture of a ‘brilliant operational brain’, a born leader, and a fearless, but never pointlessly reckless, warrior. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering.By the end of 1954 it was struggling financially and required the generosity of his brother Bill to keep it afloat. I also think that discussion about the British officer class system (which in my opinion hamstrung the British military for many generations) is completely valid.