Is there such a thing as the British way of war? And if there is, what is it? Where does it originate from? Who established it? And how does it informed British strategy throughout recent history.

I'm your host James Rogers and here on the warfare podcast we invited Professor

Andrew Lambert to provide us with so many answers to these questions. Andrew is an expert on this topic.

He is the author of a new book called The British Way of War, and this fascinating work

explains how a strategist ideas, that is Julian Corbett were ignored in

1914 proved critical throughout the Second World War and continue to shape

British military thinking today. I know you're going to love this one so drop us a five-star review on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcast because it really helps us to get out there to everyone who loves history. But here now is Andrew Lambert on the British way of war. Enjoy. Hi Andrew, welcome to the Warfare Podcast. How you doing today?

I'm doing very well, thanks James.

Where are you talking to us from in the world?

I'm in Q, in London, I'm about 300 meters or just over 300 yards in Old English measure from the National Archives.

I mean do you perpetually stand there waiting for it to open so you can get in there and write your next book?

Would you actually live there?

I actually live in Q, which is one of those kind of accidental, slightly less accidental,

you might imagine situations.

We've lived here for 30 odd years and I don't go in the National Archives as often as you might imagine.

But I would say living close to Q is a great place and you being there right now is a great place for us to start to talk about this notion of a British way of war seeing as it's within those archives that there are so many documents that pertain to the British war fighting

throughout history. So perhaps you could take us through a little bit of the history of this

notion because there's been many incarnations of this idea of a British way of war.

Though the ones that pop to mind for me are Sir Basil Little Hart's book on the British Way in

Warfare in 1932, a Lawrence Friedman's article on Alliance and the British Way in Warfare in 2009.

Where does your exploration of the British Way of Warfare start?

I think it's important that we see British approaches to warfare in the context of the British state and historically, if you're looking at Corbett, the British Empire. So Britain is a global maritime power. It thinks about

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