At 19:40 on 5 June 1916 HMS Hampshire struck a mine off Marwick Head in the Orkneys, carrying Kitchener to Archangel to see the Tsar. She went down in twenty minutes. Seven hundred and thirty-seven men died; twelve lived. The mine had been laid a week earlier by U-75, one of twenty-two she dropped off Orkney. Kitchener's body was never recovered, which is why he never entirely died. People decided he had been murdered — by Irish nationalists, by German spies, by the British government, by Churchill for stock-market reasons. Or that he had reached Russia after all, changed his name, and become Joseph Stalin.

Tradition has given him full dress rather than the pointing finger: frock coat with gold aiguillettes, the sash, the orders across his chest, and the moustache that did as much recruiting as he did. He was Secretary of State for War, dressed as a Field Marshal, which was rather the point of him. He is a display piece rather than a diorama figure — nobody stood beside Kitchener in a trench. But he presides: over the volunteer he called for in the veteran's farewell, over the conscripts who came when the volunteers ran out, and over Lawrence, who was working the far end of his war.

Tradition of London model 819. 54mm, white metal, hand-painted in gloss enamel. Single figure in full dress. Supplied in the Tradition Classic Red Box. Allow 2–3 weeks delivery.