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paulcowdell's review against another edition
4.0
As a story this is much more astonishing than the stories its subject told about himself.
Meinertzhagen, the extremely well-placed scion of an aristocratic family, was in many ways a negligible figure. Not without a place in history, of course, but that was not enough for a member of the British ruling class who regarded himself as inherently superior. He seems to have been capable of efficiency, even of scientific rigour, but such small-scale competence was a long way beneath the aspirations of the man. The result was that in order to demonstrate his innate greatness he constructed such risible tales and destructive frauds that he proved only his own incompetence and undermined the very causes he thought he was championing. (I'm speaking here of his contributions to ornithology rather than his political positions, but the same point holds).
Of course, this only reveals all the more starkly the connection between the fantasies of his moral and dramatic superiority and the form they took - contemptible racism, colonial violence and far-right politics. Garfield's book may show this as an aspect of the physiognomy of the British ruling class only implicitly, but it's no less important for that. It was difficult, reading this, not to think of Meinertzhagen's heirs in the upper tiers of British society today, those whose self-image as great leaders is based on an equally delusional view of their own achievements.
Meinertzhagen, the extremely well-placed scion of an aristocratic family, was in many ways a negligible figure. Not without a place in history, of course, but that was not enough for a member of the British ruling class who regarded himself as inherently superior. He seems to have been capable of efficiency, even of scientific rigour, but such small-scale competence was a long way beneath the aspirations of the man. The result was that in order to demonstrate his innate greatness he constructed such risible tales and destructive frauds that he proved only his own incompetence and undermined the very causes he thought he was championing. (I'm speaking here of his contributions to ornithology rather than his political positions, but the same point holds).
Of course, this only reveals all the more starkly the connection between the fantasies of his moral and dramatic superiority and the form they took - contemptible racism, colonial violence and far-right politics. Garfield's book may show this as an aspect of the physiognomy of the British ruling class only implicitly, but it's no less important for that. It was difficult, reading this, not to think of Meinertzhagen's heirs in the upper tiers of British society today, those whose self-image as great leaders is based on an equally delusional view of their own achievements.
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