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The Defence and Fall of Singapore, 1940-1942. By Brian P. Farrell. Stroud, U.K.: Tempus, 2005. ISBN 0-7524-2311-8. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Sources. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 447. £25.00.
Churchill called it the worst disaster of British arms since the surrender at Yorktown in 1781. He was not far wrong. The fall of Singapore not only had profound implications for the role and status of the British in Southeast Asia, and indeed in the world, it gave rise to a controversy that persists to this day. Brian Farrell is the latest in a long line of historians to study this extraordinary event. His account is easily the best we have. It is authoritative, wide-ranging, trenchant in its criticisms and insightful in its conclusions, and, perhaps most important, deeply contextualized. Not only does he explain how Singapore fell,...