GENERAL SIR RICHARD DANNATT
General Sir Richard Dannatt was commissioned into The Green Howards regiment in 1971. He served with the 1st Battalion in Northern Ireland(where he won the Military Cross), Cyprus and Germany and commanded the Battalion in the Airmobile role from 1989 to 1991. From 1994 to 1996 he commanded 4th Armoured Brigade in Germany and Bosnia. He took command of the 3rd (United Kingdom) Division in January 1999, also serving in Kosovo that year as Commander British Forces. In 2000 he returned to Bosnia as the Deputy Commander Operations of the Stabilisation Force, and from 2001 to 2002 he was the Assistant Chief of the General Staff in the Ministry of Defence before taking command of NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. In 2005 he became Commander-in-Chief, Land Command.
General Dannatt took over as Chief of the General Staff in 2006, leading the British Army during its most challenging time in the post-war era as it fought two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He handed over as Chief on 28th August 2009, forty years to the day from when he first joined the Army. In 2009 it was announced that HM The Queen had appointed him as the next Constable of the Tower of London.
He is an occasional columnist for The Sunday Telegraph and lectures on leadership and current defence and security issues. Richard Dannatt’s autobiography Leading from the Front will be published in 2010 by Transworld.
LATEST BOOK: LEADING FROM THE FRONT
In Leading from the Front General Sir Richard Dannatt tells the remarkable story of his forty year long career in the British Army, a career which culminated in being appointed Chief of the General Staff in 2006. From his formative experiences in Northern Ireland as a young officer – where he won a MC for bravery – to being stationed in Berlin during the height of the Cold War, the Balkans in the 1990’s, and the immense responsibilities and challenges of the war in Iraq and the Army’s extensive commitments in Afghanistan, Richard Dannatt always demonstrated profound leadership skills to those he commanded and clearly articulated his far reaching vision of an Army ‘fit for purpose’.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Leading from the Front, Transworld, 2010.
