Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. He was the official historian of the Falklands Campaign, and a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War ('the Chilcot Inquiry'). He has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the Cold War, and comments regularly on contemporary security issues. He is the author of The Future of War, Strategy, (a Financial Times and Economist book of the year) and A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East, which won the 2009 Lionel Gelber Prize and Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature.

Lawrence Freedman is the dominant academic authority in Britain and the English-speaking world on the way modern wars have been fought. Rational, liberal-minded, clear-sighted, he has drawn on a lifetime of experience for his new book. ... Command is the history of our time, told through war. It's a wonderful, idiosyncratic feat of storytelling as well as an essential account of how the modern world's wars have been fought, written by someone whose grasp of complex detail is as strong and effective as the clarity of his style. I shall read it again and again.