In fact, it was Bill Stirling, working in Cairo at the time, who wrote much of the memo and made sure it was read by senior officers. Following his convalescence, he wrote later, he broke into the GHQ in Cairo in July 1941 to deliver a memorandum about his parachute raiding force that eventually led to the formation of the SAS. He was commissioned into the Guards where he was christened "The Giant Sloth" by his fellow officers. We give people around the world the opportunity to contribute to the circular economy, earn money and protect the planet, by trading their unwanted books and media.

Born into privilege – his paternal grandfather was a baronet and his mother was a daughter of the 13th Lord Lovat – Stirling followed the usual life of his caste, packed off to board at Ampleforth at a young age. His elder brother Bill, on the other hand, had founded the original Commando training centre at Lochailort and joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), set up by Churchill to coordinate resistance in occupied Europe.

His service (he has fought in the desert, amongst other places) has given him a deep understanding of the SAS. They operated deep behind the German lines, driving hundreds of miles through the deserts of North Africa.

But I certainly wasn't going to question the long-established narrative that David Stirling was the Phantom Major, the guerrilla genius, and Mayne and Bill his enthusiastic, if less capable, sidekicks. It began to dawn on me that Stirling was more Phoney than Phantom, and while he had shamelessly embellished his own image, it was to the detriment of the deceased Mayne, who had been portrayed as a wild, inarticulate, brooding and undisciplined Irishman, which he was not. Stirling lived until old age, receiving a knighthood and plaudits from military forces around the world before his death in 1990. But Macintyre underplays Stirling’s indiscretion and fails to link it to the many other examples of the SAS commander’s recklessness and poor judgement of character. The first, Stirling's Men: the Inside History of the SAS in World War II, was published in 2004 and is now available in paperback.There are several threads here that refer to David Stirling, none on a quick look are a suitable home for this review by Saul David of the book 'David Stirling: the Phoney Major: the Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS' by Gavin Mortimer. During World War 2 David Stirling constantly fought to have his ideas heard and but for some good fortune and some luck may never have suceeded. Here, Mortimer rehabilitates Mayne, painting a more rounded picture of a ‘brilliant operational brain’, a born leader, and a fearless, but never pointlessly reckless, warrior. Spotted by guards, Stirling abandoned his crutches and entered the building, only to come face-to-face with an officer with whom he had previously fallen out.