His Excellency George Washington

At less than 300 pages, this comparatively brief life of George Washington is a fine and necessary addition to the voluminous body of literature about the revolutionary General who became the first President of the United States.

Ellis, who has written books about Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers, has turned to the most iconic figure of eighteenth and early nineteenth century America, about whom the myths that sprang up during his lifetime became even more distorted in the years after his death.

Using the vast collection of Washington Papers, Ellis has teased from the fog of legend a convincing portrait of the ambitious young soldier who fought for the British against the French before leading the American colonists in their fight for independence against the British.

The war was almost lost before it had begun: Washington, keen to take on the enemy, made overcomplicated plans that foundered when his inexperienced militia came up against better trained and better equipped redcoats. Only British incompetence saved him from utter defeat.

Gradually, with the help of good advisors, he came to realise that his troops needed to fight a different kind of war, one in which skirmishes and ambushes replaced fixed-formation fighting. To this end, he fought his natural instincts, teaching himself that on some occasions not acting was as important as forging on.

The British surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781. Two years later, following the ratification in Paris of the formal peace treaty, Washington resigned his commission: ' "I retire from the great theatre of Action … and take my leave of all the enjoyments of public life."' Ellis describes it as the 'greatest exit in American history.'

Of course, Washington returned to public service not long after, as the (unanimously chosen) first chief executive of the fledgling republic. For the next eight years, he trod a fine and diplomatically balanced line, keeping out of much Congress business, but acting decisively when the occasion demanded.

In his retirement, the old general looked ahead to his posthumous reputation; his will stipulated that his slaves should be freed (slavery was one of the republic's great conundrums), and his estate was divided equally between all members of his family, thus ensuring that no Washington 'dynasty' would flourish in a new country whose inhabitants had fought for the cause of equality. The great experiment in democracy still had a long way to go, but Washington's contribution went a long way towards ensuring that the republic would survive its seismic birth pains.

Professor Ellis writes in a warm, elegant and authoritative style; he is concise, but illustrates his arguments with well-chosen quotations and examples. Clearly an admirer of Washington, whose 'massive ego' was reigned in by supreme self-control, Ellis nevertheless provides a balanced and compulsive account of a titanic life.