accounts accurate and comprehensive. Edmonds's correspondence with Basil Liddell Hart shows that Hart valued the official history and offered constructive criticism. Green wrote that when David French called the work "official but not history", he had used Hart's words out of context, Liddell Hart meaning that by leaving potentially controversial details to be read between the lines, Edmonds created the risk that later historians might use the phrase to describe the volumes. Later years Edmonds was knighted in the 1928 Birthday Honours. In 1939 Daniel was 75, Edmonds was 79 and the government again considered terminating the writing of the official history, given that the combined age of the two most senior members was more than 150. Edward Bridges, the Secretary to the Cabinet, told Edmonds that he would be retained only until the completion of the volume he was working on and that Daniel should retire that summer. Daniel was asked to explain the value of the histories to the Treasury and repeated much of what he had written in 1919 and 1922, that a commercial publisher could not have the same access to the senior participants and would forfeit the chance to inform the public and educate military officers, when six volumes of Military Operations France and Belgium remained to be written. The government was placated and writing continued but Daniel retired in July 1939 and Edmonds took on his duties as Secretary of the Historical Section. The last Western Front volume, Military Operations France and Belgium 1917 ** (Third Ypres) was published in 1948. Edmonds retired in July, just before the publication of Military Operations Italy 1915–1919. Edmonds spent his retirement at Brecon House, Long Street, Sherborne, Dorset, where he died on 2 August 1956. Notes Footnotes Bibliography Books (First published as The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, London, 2009. ) (Revised version of "John Fortescue, James Edmonds and the History of the Great War" in the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, vol 70 [Summer 1992] pp. 101–113, ) Newspapers Websites Further reading Books (Published in 1929 marked Confidential and limited to government officials) Journals External links Centre for First World War Studies: James Edward Edmonds 1861 births 1956 deaths People educated at King's College School, London Knights Bachelor Companions of the Order of the Bath Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George Graduates of