Howard Kippenberger: Dauntless Spirit.

• Author: Grey, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

HOWARD KIPPENBERGER

Dauntless Spirit

Author: Denis McLean

Published by: Random House, Auckland, 2008, 384pp, $39.95.

Kippenberger may fairly be regarded as New Zealand's most famous and influential soldier (for this Australian, at least, Freyberg really counts as an Imperial figure), and this, the second book devoted to him to appear in the last decade, provides as flank and fair an account of the man and his achievements as one is likely to want. McLean modestly eschews any claim to having written a 'military study', pointing his readers to Glyn Harper's earlier book, but in truth he handles these aspects perfectly capably while avoiding the tendency to get lost in the weeds of tactical detail that sometimes bedevils the official histories.

Two aspects of the book seem especially worthy of comment. Kip's prominence during the Second World War tends to eclipse consideration of his experiences as a young soldier during the First. This was clearly a formative experience, as it was for all those who survived it; McLean makes the obvious (in retrospect) point that Kip's being invalided home after the Somme very likely saved his life. His 'recovery time' after his war service was clearly also important in shaping him. Conventional military biographies are wont to skim over this sort of detail, and McLean's consideration of them adds to his overall portrait of Kip's character.

The treatment of Kip's career after the Second World War when he was called on to edit the official history offers numerous insights into the man, and here I feel McLean could have done more with the voluminous quantity of records generated by the War History Branch. New Zealand's official history was an extraordinary and enormous undertaking, both by comparison with what had been done after 1919 and in terms of other, comparable efforts within the Commonwealth. Although he was an accomplished writer himself, Kip's qualifications for the role of editor-in-chief were not, perhaps, immediately apparent. McLean...