The actor Daniel Craig featured in the previous post. Twenty years ago he played Guy Crouchback in Channel 4's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 'Sword of Honour' trilogy. The book documents Crouchback's war, which paralleled Waugh's own in many respects, and has a large cast who I've always assumed were modelled on, or amalgams of, real people. Indeed I have already written about one probable source for Brigadier Ritchie Hook. I have just come across another example.

I have been reading the second volume of the diaries of Henry 'Chips' Channon. Now, don't judge me. Channon was clearly an appalling human being: shallow, snobbish, hypocritical, anti-semitic, a Tory MP - I could go on. (By the way the child in the picture is Paul Channon, who went on to become a cabinet minister under Thatcher). However, I got the book very cheaply, and that's not to be sniffed at. And the years covered are 1938 to 1943, so I thought it would be interesting to see how the events of those years were viewed at the time. As with Charles Repington's diaries from the Great War which I read earlier this year it becomes clear that many of them aren't viewed as being worth mentioning. Repington never writes about the Easter Rising or the Russian Revolution and Channon doesn't regard the battle of Stalingrad as being worth even alluding to in passing. The main amusement in Channon's case is just how wrong he was about so many things. Not merely that he was an arch-appeaser (*), but that his tips for high political office - including himself - inevitably get sacked shortly afterwards, never to rise again. At one point he predicts the imminent restoration of the monarchy in Germany, which even without the benefit of hindsight does seem as if he's been smoking something.

Waugh's novel contains a character called Lieutenant Padfield, the 'Loot', an American social phenomenon who is everywhere and knows everyone. Channon's diaries feature the 'Sarge', one Stuart Preston, who is attached to Eisenhower's HQ in some unspecified capacity, knows everyone and is at every social function. The real Preston, who went on to be art critic of the New York Times, is now understood to have been working in counter-intelligence, with the task of infiltrating high society to identify sources of indiscreet gossip; if Channon is to be believed he did so in a very hands on manner. Waugh's 'Loot' turns out to be spying one of the major characters on behalf of a firm of US lawyers, so perhaps Waugh (**), and therefore presumably everyone else as well, was fully aware of what the 'Sarge' was up to.

* After the Germans occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia in contravention of the Munich agreement, he observes that Hitler doesn't make life easy for his friends.

** Who also appears in Channon's diaries; Chips is not a fan.

 The following newspaper clipping has come into my possession. Can I make it clear that I in no way condone the sentiments expressed, except of course that I like to see large numbers of toy soldiers on a table.

I believe that the year is 1915; I wonder if they were saying the same thing by Christmas 1918. It's also interesting to note the sexism which they've sneaked in among the warmongering. The Daily Sketch was absorbed into the Daily Mail half a century or so ago. It provided the downmarket bigotry which when added to the Mail's existing establishment right-wingery (they of course are the paper that supported both Hitler and Mosley) produced the current appalling publication.

 The book which I reviewed yesterday outlines several ways in which those who broke the laws of war might be punished. Some of these aimed to humiliate those who had brought disgrace to chivalry: they might be stripped of their spurs, their shield could be hung upside down or they could be paraded through the streets on horseback while facing the horses tail. Now I know that a lot of regular readers have an encyclopaedic knowledge of this blog, so no doubt there are many of you out there saying to yourselves: "Hang a trout, what about that thing you posted on 25th March 2014 about Sir Giles Mompesson? Are you now telling us that never happened?". Well, indeed I am.

Personally I put the blame squarely on those dilettante, liberal, London-based journalists at the Guardian, who one must assume saw the words 'facing the horse's tail' and let their fevered imaginations do the rest. Having now done my own fact-checking I can confirm that Mompesson was almost certainly merely riding backwards. It is hard to be entirely sure though; according to the Dictionary of National Biography the corrupt MP was sentenced both to life imprisonment and to permanent exile, which seems an unlikely combination. He clearly never served either punishment anyway.

In any event that posting from all those years ago isn't a complete write off. I still think a picture of a dog that looks like Hitler has comic validity.

Our morally reprehensible Prime Minister has returned to a martial frame of reference by choosing to describe the act of parliament that mandates his actions vis a vis the EU as the "Surrender Act". It seems like a fairly ineffective political ploy to me as all those who view the EU as an enemy are pretty much in his camp anyway. One question is why so significant a minority are prepared to see things in those terms.

Noel Coward's 1947 play 'Peace in our Time' is based in an alternative world where the Nazis, having achieved air superiority, have successfully invaded Britain at the end of 1940. In one scene there is a discussion about whether it would have been better if the Battle of Britain had been won.

Alma: It might have been better for America and the rest of the world, but it would not have been better for us.

Fred: Why not?

Alma: Because we should have got lazy again, and blown out with our own glory. We should have been bombed and blitzed and we should have stood up under it - an example to the whole civilised world - and that would have finished us.

Maybe unsurprisingly the play was not a success with audiences. In that 1947 run it featured Kenneth More (*), whose portrayal of Douglas Bader some years later was how the British public really wanted and expected to see themselves.




The Battle of Britain was pivotal for the world because it meant that victory over Hitler could come from the West as well as the East.  But an important point lost in all the myths is not that it was a turning point for the UK, but that it wasn't. In fact it enabled things to carry on here much as they had done before despite massive changes in the rest of the world. Many of those who voted in the referendum were actually expressing a desire to live in the country they grew up in; one full of white people who had won the war. They, naturally enough, can't, and given that they are unlikely to change their minds, all the rest of us can do is wait for them to die; unfortunately they seem intent on taking us with them.



* It also featured Bernard Lee (who later on, as 'M', was part of a different fantasy in which the UK was still a significant player in world events), Dandi Nichols (who, as Else Garnett, had to put up with what that generation of British people have always actually been like) and Dora Bryan (whose wish for a Beatle for Christmas looks positively reasonable in hindsight). Let's finish with her, and at least have a smile:

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live." - Gustave Flaubert

I have been thinking about books and how I choose what to read. Despite what the internet seems to think, Oscar Wilde most certainly didn't say "it's the things that you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it"; and in any case I ignore the warning. Like most of us probably do, I always have a non-fiction book to hand: military history of course, but also other subjects that interest me: political economy, mathematics, opera etc. I would be loathe to claim that I ever retain anything when I've finished them, but they at least temporarily make me feel virtuous.

I'm not sure that I can say the same for my recent choice of fiction. What's on my kindle is in part driven by what Amazon and/or the publishers offer at a discount (especially the 99p daily deals), but even when I buy something worthy on the cheap it doesn't always follow that I will actually read it. Indeed I find myself increasingly reading for light relief, often even taking out much of the work of choosing by reading through series of books in order. I have mentioned before that I have been re-reading the Flashman novels (got a bit stuck on Flash for Freedom!, which is somewhat more unpleasant than I remember it) and also working my way through the much longer 87th Precinct series. These latter are proving a bit difficult because not all of them are on kindle and I have therefore been forced to scout around for cheap second hand copies; paying full price being self-evidently not an option. I have reached 'Fuzz', which combines the usual far-fetched main story involving the regulars with a sub-plot about a book being published whose protagonist shares a name with one of the detectives. Presumably there is a sort of metafictional paradox going on; we know that novelists typically avoid using the type of name that one ever comes across in real life.

Going back to how I choose books, it is to some extent a case of Beziehungswahn, with one thing leading to another. I saw the film of 'Journey's End' and tried to get hold of R.C. Sherriff's autobiography. I found that to be rather too expensive for me, but did come across a reasonably priced copy of a book about the battalion in which he served, the 9th East Surrey. It then became apparent that he wasn't the only officer in the unit who went on to literary fame, and my attention was drawn to Gilbert Frankau. He is out of fashion now, but between the wars was apparently a big seller. He turned to writing after being thwarted in his ambition of becoming a Conservative MP; they wouldn't have him because he was divorced. Personally I would have thought that his being a fascist should have been more of a block. And he was; he wrote a newspaper article in 1933 entitled 'As a Jew I am Not Against Hitler'. His extended family has nevertheless, as so often with refugees and migrants, greatly enriched British cultural life; including one of them appearing in every episode of Fawlty Towers. Anyway, back to Gilbert. He wrote of his wartime experiences in fictionalised form, and, having become interested in the 9th East Surrey and the 24th Division as a whole, it seemed logical to seek that out. The book's title: 'Peter Jackson - Cigar Merchant'.


"There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it." - Bertrand Russell

And so to the theatre. "Thank God," you all cry "five days wargaming in a row is not why we read this blog". That begs several questions, but we shall ignore them and plough on; and at least it's a play about a soldier. Accompanied once more by the elder Miss Epictetus - the younger Miss Epictetus does exist, but is far too cool to be seen in the company of her aged parent - I have been to the West Yorkshire Playhouse to see Reece Dinsdale give his Richard III.


The last time I saw him was in the same theatre last year where he played Alan Bennett. In a sense he is again playing another familiar character - although, unlike Bennett, this one is thankfully dead - because his Richard is quite clearly Hitler. As the Guardian review points out "in the early 1930s, the British press often made fun of Hitler, misled by his appearance into believing that he posed no real threat" and Dinsdale produces more than a few moments of real laugh-out-loud humour. I was wondering what his performance reminded me of, but I think that Jo Haywood has it right in the Yorkshire Life review: he's channelling Leonard Rossiter. Imagine a serial-killing Rigsby only using one arm and wearing one built up shoe and you're there. The WYP seems to be having a season of shoe based disability productions. In 'The Glass Menagerie' the actress represented lameness by only wearing one shoe wile the rest of the cast wore none. That felt crass, frankly walking with a limp would have sufficed, but Richard does need a bit more visible deformity.


The Richard as fascist dictator theme is not new - the last modern dress version that I saw was Sir Ian McKellen's iconic production twenty five years ago at the National Theatre where he played the part as Moseley - but that's because it works very well. So too does the stark stage design and the sound effects and intermittent background music. Less happy is having parts of the dialogue literally telephoned in from offstage, and some of the doubling up of parts caused a little confusion. Overall though it provided an excellent finale to my late summer and autumn of Shakespeare.

And so to the Town Hall, Leeds Town Hall to be precise, for Götterdämmerung, the culmination of Opera North's four season run through Wagner's 'Das Ring des Nibelungen'. It was performed there rather than at the Grand Theatre because like the whole series it was a staged concert, meaning that the singers perform in evening dress (except for the chap playing Siegfried who appeared to share a stylist with Meatloaf) with orchestra on stage and with the surtitles expanded into full audio/visual splendour, full of rippling Rhine and blood coloured flames.

It's been a double whammy of boardgame events. First up was the White Swan where games played  were Coup, Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, Cards against Humanity, Avalon and Citadels. I liked Coup which I'd never played before, but really don't like Cards Against Humanity and Avalon doesn't do much for me either. The trouble with Avalon or Resistance is that one has to care about the success or failure of the mission to make it enjoyable and frankly I can never be arsed. We played Survive with the expansion involving giant squid and dolphins and it was complete carnage.

Atlantic Star as played by me

Last night was the Leeds Meeples where I played Kaigan, Love Letter and Atlantic Star. I was rather taken with Kaigan which, while in theory is about the mapping of the Japanese coast, but in reality is simply a very clever tactical card laying game coupled with an area control element. Two of us completely misunderstood the playing of the cards phase until after we had done it for the first time out of five, but I still finished a reasonable second. Atlantic Star is supposed to be about shipping companies, but is actually a rather elaborate version of Rummy. It was still a good game though and I'd play it again, hoping very much to do better.



The Guardian, always first with the news, yesterday carried the story of the MP Giles Mompesson who was fined, expelled from parliament and told to parade up the Strand "with his face in a horse's anus" for extortionately abusing his royal monopoly for the licensing of inns and manufacture of gold thread in 1621. We could do with a bit more of that sort of thing; it would sort the bankers out for sure.



And, just to dispel any suggestion of political bias in my choice of newspapers, I offer from the Telegraph a picture of a puppy that looks like Hitler; which obviously needs no further justification for being included here.

So it seems as if the scoop regarding the founder of Bitcoin was at the Hitler's Diaries end of the investigative journalism spectrum. I hope that all of you who thought that it represented anything positive about the losers who play with toy trains are now seriously embarrassed. You should be ashamed of yourselves.


It was off to the Leeds Meeples today for games of Apples to Apples, Village, Race for the Galaxy and Ice Flow. Village is a pretty bog standard worker placement game; it passed the time nicely, but didn't make me want to rush out and buy it. Race for the Galaxy was better (as in I won), but not enough interaction between players (as in none at all) for the average wargamer. I also won Ice Flow as usual.