“I have been fortunate to have had 40 years as a soldier – those forty years covering four decades each with a different characteristic…What that forty years experience has taught me is that warfare, for all its violence, controversy and cost is essentially about people. It is people whodo the fighting, on behalf of other people and amongst the people in whose country we are operating – so warfare today, and perhaps it was ever thus, is a human activity. So in addressing tonight’s title, I do so in the broadest context of the hearts and minds of the people – their attitude to what they are doing, and their attitude to what is going on around them.”

The 2011 Theos Annual Lecture was delivered by General Lord Richard Dannatt and chaired by BBC Defense Correspondent Caroline Wyatt on Tuesday 8th November 2011, at One Birdcage Walk, London.

A full text transcript of this lecture is available here.