There are an awful lot of limitations inherent in this type of work:
(i) The nature of the institution being studied means much of any original source material would have been subject to an abnormally high level of self-censorship when it was created;
(ii) Operational procedures would have led to substantial gaps in any documentary record, notably in relation to any controversial and/or illegal activities undertaken during peacetime or any breaches of the Geneva Convention in wartime;
(iii) As an "authorized biography", the writer is to a degree at the mercy of his subject in what remaining material the subject was prepared to share; and
(iv) As an "authorized biography", there is always an issue that the writer may have been selected for harboring favorable bias towards his subject.
It isn't clear from this book that Professor Jeffery made a serious attempt to address any of these issues head-on. What emerges is a slightly jolly-hockeysticks, uncritical portrayal of the service that, while no doubt good for PR purposes, doesn't really qualify as an independent history.
There is plenty of good material in the book, much of it entirely new, although sadly the new material is some of the driest material - both WW1 and WW2 operations have been the subject of numerous entertaining memoirs and unofficial history, while this book brings to light a lot of the drier inter-war material and administrative/bureaucratic shenanigans that (perhaps unsurprisingly) other authors have steered clear of.
One for aficionados keen to see new material rather than a piece of entertainment or bona fide history.
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