While finance determined the speed of the writing of volumes, Edmonds, as the Director, had the greater influence on the literary and academic integrity of the work. In the first volume, published in 1922, Edmonds wrote in the preface, that "no deviation from the truth nor misrepresentation will be found in the official histories on which my name appeared". Edmonds' claim has been challenged ever since, leading to a common assumption that the work is vapid at best and at worst fraudulent, a partial, misleading and exculpatory account of the military establishment. In 1934, Liddell Hart questioned the integrity of the writers, calling 1918 Part I "patriotic" and "parochial". Norman Brook, one of the official historians, claimed in 1945, that Edmonds could not be trusted to revise 1916 Part I, because he had succumbed to the temptation to interpolate his views. In 1976, John Keegan (15 May 1934 – 2 August 2012) wrote
