Edgar Williams Popular Books
Edgar Williams Biography & Facts
Brigadier Sir Edgar Trevor Williams (20 November 1912 – 26 June 1995) was a British historian and Army military intelligence officer who played a significant role in the Second Battle of El Alamein in the Second World War. He was one of the few officers who was privy to the Ultra secret, and served on the staff of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery as his intelligence officer for the rest of the war. A graduate of Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a First in modern history in 1934, Williams was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 1st King's Dragoon Guards in June 1939. In February 1941, the troop he was commanding was the first British unit to encounter the German Afrika Korps. He was recruited to work in military intelligence by Brigadier Francis de Guingand, who later became Montgomery's chief of staff. As an historian, Williams was accustomed to integrating different sources of information to build up a larger picture. He integrated information from Ultra with that from other sources such as the Y service, prisoner of war interrogations, aerial reconnaissance and ground reconnaissance behind enemy lines by the Long Range Desert Group. After the war Williams became a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and the Warden of Rhodes House, Oxford, and editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. As secretary to the Rhodes Trustees, he was concerned with the selection and subsequent well-being of nearly two hundred Rhodes scholars each year. Early life Edgar Trevor Williams was born in Chatham, Kent, on 20 November 1912, the second of the three children and oldest son of (Joseph) Edgar Williams, a clergyman, and his wife, Anne Ethel née Evans. His father served as a chaplain in the Royal Navy during the Great War, and served on the Western Front. After the war the family moved to Wolverhampton. Trevor (known to his friends as "Bill") was educated at Tettenhall College, Staffordshire, and then at King Edward VII School in Sheffield after his father was posted there in 1928. He secured a postmastership at Merton College, Oxford, where he played soccer and cricket, and obtained a First in modern history in 1934.Williams remained at Merton as a Harmsworth senior scholar, then became an assistant lecturer at the Liverpool University in 1936. He returned to Merton in 1937 as a junior research fellow, studying the Cabinet of the United Kingdom in the 18th century. He earned a Master of Arts degree in 1938, and commenced work on his PhD, in which he argued that it was the Treaty of Waitangi that granted Britain sovereignty over New Zealand, and the land was not terra nullius. Today his argument is universally accepted. In 1938 Williams married Monica Robertson, the daughter of Philip Robertson, a professor from New Zealand. They had one child, a daughter, and divorced in 1945. Second World War North Africa Williams was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 1st King's Dragoon Guards on 21 June 1939. After the Second World War broke out in September 1939, his unit became an armoured car regiment in the 2nd Armoured Division. The division was sent to Cyrenaica, where, on 24 February 1941, Williams was in command of a troop of C Squadron, 1st King's Dragoon Guards when it was ambushed near El Agheila. It became the first British unit to encounter the German Afrika Korps (DAK).The desert sun affected his already weak eyes, so he was sent to recuperate in Cairo, where he was posted to General Headquarters (GHQ) Middle East Command in which Brigadier Francis de Guingand became Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) in February 1942. The appointment of de Guingand, an officer with no experience in intelligence, said much about the state of intelligence in the British Army at the time, where it was assumed that staff college training and a good brain were all that was required. Aware of his lack of expertise, de Guingand selected Williams and James Oliver Ewart to serve on his staff. According to de Guingand: "Ewart and Williams were an ideal combination. They understood each other perfectly. Both had first-class brains, both were university dons, and hated soldiering as a profession!" When de Guingand was appointed Brigadier General Staff of the Eighth Army in August 1942, he arranged for Williams to be transferred to Eighth Army headquarters as a GSO2.While working at GHQ, Williams had been indoctrinated into the Ultra secret. Knowledge of this was highly restricted; the Eighth Army commander was shown the original text, but not the corps commanders, who were only given summaries with no indication of the source of the information. The quality of the information coming from Ultra was very high, but over-reliance on it could be very dangerous, both militarily, when Erwin Rommel and the DAK did not act as expected, and professionally, when the DMI was fired for failing to forecast this. Williams's academic training came to the fore; as an historian, he was accustomed to integrating different sources of information to build up a larger picture. Information coming from Ultra was integrated with that from other sources such as the Y service, prisoner of war interrogations, aerial reconnaissance and ground reconnaissance behind enemy lines by the Long Range Desert Group. Williams and his staff would attempt to provide an assessment and then use Ultra to verify it. He would prepare his intelligence summaries in the early hours of the morning by the light of a pressure lamp, wearing a crochet jacket that had once belonged to a German general.When Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery assumed command of the Eighth Army in August 1942, he was impressed with Williams and identified him as the man he wanted to head his intelligence section. For the Battle of Alam Halfa, Ultra provided information on German intentions that was accurate in every detail except for a two-day delay caused by a shortage of petrol. In his memoirs Montgomery recalled how Williams pointed out a crucial weakness in Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's deployment of his troops, in that they were arranged in a manner that Williams described as "corsetted", with German troops between and behind the Italians. Williams suggested that if the two could be separated, then it might be possible to break through the Italian forces. Montgomery exploited this in the Second Battle of El Alamein. Williams later explained the difficulty of dealing with intelligence during the German and Italian withdrawal after the battle:Rommel of course had to suggest that he was going to hang on to the last moment because of Hitler; one therefore had to inform Monty that Rommel's intention—expressed intention—was to stay put here. The trouble was that while we were helped enormously by Ultra—because Ultra expressed Rommel's intentions to the all-highest—we were sometimes hindered by Ultra, because Rommel was too good a soldier to carry the intentions out... I think we probably asked Monty to lay on too many preparations—whi.... Discover the Edgar Williams popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Edgar Williams books.
Best Seller Edgar Williams Books of 2024
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens & David Paroissien'Dickens's finest work in the genre of the detective story was his last' The TimesEdwin Drood is contracted to marry orphan Rosa when he comes of age, but when they find that duty ...
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Jackrabbit Smile
Joe R. LansdaleEdgar Awardwinner and fan favorite Joe R. Lansdale is back with Hap and Leonard's latest caper: investigating the disappearance of a revivalist cult leader's daughter. Hap and Leon...
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Selected Essays
Samuel JohnsonThis volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary charact...
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Slow Fall
Edgar WilliamsSlow Fall is a mystery in The Wekiwa County series. Set in the preDisney torpor of rural central Florida, it tells the story of an exMiamicop who returns to his smalltown Florida h...
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Melmoth the Wanderer
Charles Maturin & Victor SageCreated by an Irish clergyman, Melmoth is one of the most fiendish characters in literature. In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tort...
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Rest in Pieces
Bess LovejoyA “marvelously macabre” (Kirkus Reviews) history of the bizarre afterlives of corpses of the celebrated and notorious dead.For some of the most influential figures in history, deat...
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Short Stories in French
Richard CowardThis is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original French and in English translation. Including stories...
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The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Wallace StevensAn essential book for all readers of poetry, and the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet." Originally pu...
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The Collected Adventures of Edgar Williams Volume 1
David PearceFollow in the footsteps of the new Victorian gentleman adventurer, Edgar Williams, in this collection of three thrilling stories, tracing his travels around the world. In 'The...
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Dear Los Angeles
David KipenA rich mosaic of diary entries and letters from Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Susan Sontag, Albert Einstein, and many more, this is the story of Los Angeles as told by locals, tran...
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The Way of All Flesh
Samuel ButlerWith an essay by V. S. Pritchett.'The greater part of every family is always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very large family, it is as much as can be expected'Writ...
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The Deerfield Massacre
James L. SwansonFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt (now an Apple TV+ series) and in the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon comes a spellbinding account of a forgotten chapte...