John Denton Pinkstone French, 1st Earl of Ypres
Vanity Fair Print
£50.00
Out of stock
French's most important role was as Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) for the first year and a half of the First World War. After the British suffered heavy casualties at the battles of Mons and Le Cateau, French wanted to withdraw the BEF from the Allied line to refit and only agreed to take part in the First Battle of the Marne after a private meeting with the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, against whom he bore a grudge thereafter. In May 1915 he leaked information about shell shortages to the press in the hope of engineering Kitchener's removal.
Condition - good
By Godfrey Douglas Giles
chromolithograph, published in Vanity Fair 12 July 1900
40x19cm