First World War.com - Who's Who

First World War.com - A multimedia history of world war one

Who's Who: Sir James Edmonds
Updated - Saturday, 9 February, 2002

Sir James Edward Edmonds (1861-1956) was the official British historian for World War One.

Widely regarded as a form of collective hagiography in current times it was nevertheless only Edmonds' devotion to the extensive multi-volume project that ensured its eventual completion.

Although inclined to take a pro-Douglas Haig viewpoint in those volumes produced in the 1930s - to some extent driven in reaction to the publication of wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George's scathing, self-serving War Memoirs - Edmonds' official history is by no means uncritical of Britain's wartime leadership.

Rather dry in style Edmonds primarily intended his history to serve as a publication for use in staff training exercises. Edmonds himself - a Brigadier General - was a quite different individual in person than his history suggests, and was somewhat given to gossip.

He died in 1956.

"ANZAC" was coined in 1915 from the initials of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.