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In the minds of many, Kaiser Wilhelm II was the man responsible for the catastrophe that engulfed Europe in 1914, a cold, brutal ruler who represented the pride and swagger of Imperial Germany, who must take the bulk of the responsibility for the First World War.
Although this caricature is firmly embedded in popular history, the Kaiser remains an elusive figure. Alan Palmer has set out to tell the story of the extraordinary life of this temperamentally insecure man, but whose outward display so full of swagger and bombast.
Born in a Prussia that was the supreme militaristic society of the post-Napoleonic era and accustomed from his earliest days to all the trappings and sounds of soldiery, Alan Palmer examines the Anglo-German background to Wilhelm's life and reign and his changing attitudes towards Britain - a country he both admired and resented.
