Talk:Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet

Wilson and the July Crisis
"Note to self and others"

Lurking at the back of my mind is a recollection of Wilson turning up (whether invited or uninvited I couldn't say) looking vaguely sinister to a meeting of Tory politicians on the evening of 1 August. I think it might be in some recollection of Leo Amery. The following day the Tories wrote to Edward Grey urging him to stand firm. Christopher Clark in "The Sleepwalkers" links Wilson to the Tory intrigues but doesn't provide the exact detail.

Slightly tangential, but in his famous speech to the Commons Grey said that it would cost Britain no more to get involved in the war than to stay out - probably because he envisaged (or wanted wavering Liberals to think he was envisaging) a limited commitment, not deploying the BEF to France. Sending Wilson's BEF to France, let alone the vast army which Kitchener called into being, was never as foregone a conclusion as is sometimes assumed.Paulturtle (talk) 01:18, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Possible addition to...
...the "Modern biographies and popular culture" section: During the second season of the tv series Peaky Blinders, the lead character, Tommy Shelby, is pressured by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), under the direction of Winston Churchill, to kill a British Army officer, "Field Marshal Russell", a former Black and Tans commander who alledgedly committed atrocities in Cork, Ireland. A false flag operation, the plan is to blame the assassination on the IRA, as Churchill, the SIS and a pro-peace faction of the IRA want to undermine the anti-peace faction of the IRA. It would appear that FM Russell is a putative fictionalized version of Sir Henry Wilson. (This is just the info, not the specific wording for any potential addition.) Thoughts...? - w o lf  07:28, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Killed in action?
No. He was a civilian when he was assassinated. Grassynoel (talk) 14:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Was he? DuncanHill (talk) 14:34, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Too long?
An editor has tagged the page as "too long to read and navigate comfortable". I am removing the tag as I think, in this case, the length is not unreasonable and fragmenting the flow of the article would be unhelpful. I happy to consider proposals from a willing editor as to how they propose to spilt it. Dormskirk (talk) 09:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately at over 27k words of readable prose, the length is entirely unreasonable - see WP:SIZE and WP:SUMMARY. The article would benefit from significant summarization to make it more accessible to the general readership. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:48, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


 * As already indicated above, I disagree. Are you prepared to do the work to condense it? If not this seems to be a case of WP:DRIVEBY and the tag should not be readded. Dormskirk (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, I am absolutely willing to work on it. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:22, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Great. In which case that's fine. Please go-ahead. Many thanks, Dormskirk (talk) 15:26, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Irish Conscription

 * I agree that the article is too long but I suggest that the reference removed today (Bromage, Mary (1964), Churchill and Ireland, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IL, pg 36., Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 64-20844) be reinserted as it covered the information preceding todays edit: "...acquired a reputation as a political intriguer for his role in agitating for the introduction of conscription in Ireland." With the two Jeffery books representing well over 200 edits, an additional source should be welcomed. Thanks Palisades1 (talk) 16:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

The section referred (or did when it was first written) to the reputation which he acquired (fairly or unfairly) in the campaigns for the introduction of conscription in Britain in the Edwardian era (led by Wilson's old patron Lord Roberts of Kandahar), and in the Curragh Incident. Hence Asquith already thought him a "poisonous snake" by the start of the war. The proposed extension of conscription to Ireland was a different matter, in 1917-18 - as every schoolboy knows it was one of the issues which inflamed Irish opinion towards independence, although it is less well remembered that a lot of British opinion felt at the time that the Irish had had more than enough special treatment lately and that it was high time that they were made to pull their weight with the war effort. Wikipedia does not yet have an article on the UK manpower crisis of 1917-18, an enormously important topic (Keith Grieves on manpower and Tony Wrigley on Lloyd George and the unions are probably the main sources); Wilson was busy at Versailles in the winter of 1917-18 and by the time he became CIGS early in 1918 the Irish political situation had already moved on a bit - the manpower situation was absolutely dire in March/April 1918 but historians don't dwell on Wilson's views on Irish conscription in that period, and anyway this is long after he had acquired his slippery reputation. I don't have that 1964 book on Churchill and Ireland so I'm not in a position to check exactly what it says.

As for the "one source" problem, you always get this with biographies. People who hold the highest office (King George V, Asquith, Lloyd George) have multiple biographies, and so do people who are household names (Kitchener, and Haig used to be until recently). Other important people often tend with a few exceptions to have one and only one serious heavyweight biography, and this is true of politicians as well. At the time this article was written Keith Jeffery's highly regarded biography was the most up to date, superseding older ropier ones by people like Collier and Bernard Ash. Since then there has been another, "Wilson's War", which contains all sorts of interesting material, especially on the latter half of the war (Jeffery's weakest chapters are on 1918, as that book correctly points out). But the article will need splitting at that point, and I really don't have time at this instant.Paulturtle (talk) 06:27, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I've ordered a copy of the Bromage book on Churchill and Ireland and will revert when I've checked what it actually says. I'll dig out my copy of "Wilson's War" as well.Paulturtle (talk) 20:53, 26 April 2024 (UTC)


 * In the index of the Bromage book I think there are 10 pages that refer to Wilson. Palisades1 (talk) 13:41, 29 April 2024 (UTC)