He completely and utterly screwed up the biography of a true character of the British Empire in Africa of the early 20th Century, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. Capstick's book, "Warrior" is virtually unreadable and is full to the very brim of BS.
I have to agree. The Meinertzhagen manuscript should never have been published.
I wouldn't blame Capstick for it, however. The blame has to sit squarely on his estate and his publisher.
It looks like a first draft. Probably half of a first draft. Containing far too much irrelevant, personal material that should have been tossed and wasn't because there was barely enough text to call it book-length.
It might have been a better book had he lived. But I don't know good it could have been. We have Meinertzhagen's own writings, and one really good out-of-print biography, but beyond that, I believe everyone who knew him is long dead.
And if you know anything at all about Meinertzhagen, you know that he was one of Britain's top spooks for a couple of decades, so the chances of some previously unknown material surfacing seems pretty slim to me. He would have seen to that.
- TJM
