Clifford Kinvig

Clifford Arthur Kinvig (22 November 1934 – 22 February 2017) was senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, director of education of the British Army, and a noted military author who debunked some of the myths about the bridge over the River Kwai and the construction of the Burma Railway.

Early life Clifford Kinvig was born on 22 November 1934 to a family of Manx origins. His father was Frank Kinvig, a Liverpool warehouseman, and his mother was Dorothy. The Times, in their 2017 obituary of Kinvig, noted that the name was an anagram of Viking and that it was not unusual on the Isle of Man which had been settled by the Vikings in the tenth century. Kinvig was educated at Waterloo Grammar School in Liverpool and subsequently read history at the University of Durham.

Kinvig married Shirley Acklam in 1956 and they had three children. and a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. His final book was Churchill's Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia 1918–1920, published by Continuum in 2006, which the publisher described as the first complete account of the operation.

Kinvig died on 22 February 2017.

Selected publications Death railway. Pan Books, London, 1973. (Pan/Ballantine illustrated history of World War 2: campaign books.) River Kwai railway: The story of the Burma-Siam railroad. Brassey's, London, 1992. Scapegoat: General Percival of Singapore. Brassey's, London, 1996. (Brasseys Biographies) "General Percival and the fall of Singapore" in Brian P. Farrell & Sandy Hunter (Eds.) 60 Years on: The fall of Singapore revisited. Eastern University Press, Singapore, 2002. Churchill's crusade: The British invasion of Russia, 1918–1920. Continuum, London, 2006.