Revisionist historians have challenged the popular view of the war as one of futile slaughter. The Somme was, for William Philpott, a ‘Bloody Victory’.2 While A. J. P. Taylor called Passchendaele ‘the blindest slaughter of a blind war’, Gary Sheffield argues that Taylor’s ‘blanket condemnation of the campaign … is a travesty of the truth’.3 But no such case is made for Gallipoli, or more formally the ‘Dardanelles’ campaign. Its aim was extremely laudable: the naval destruction of Turkey’s defences along the Dardanelles passage at the entrance of the Sea of Marmara which led to Constantinople. Through a mix of land and sea power, the Turkish capital would be seized and the Central Powers would lose a key ally. The idea was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty.