The comment by the soi-disant nundanket (**) that started it all excluded colonial wars, so I'm afraid that the Zulu War wouldn't count, or the Boer War for that matter. Others must make up their own minds about the Falklands, but I certainly don't consider it a victory. A quick look at the map will suffice to show that everyone ended up exactly where they started, at the cost of much blood and much treasure along the way. Other than scale, it's not dissimilar to the Iran-Iraq war which was occurring at the same time. One of the things that always irritated me about the whole 'Thatcher won the Falklands back' business was of course that it was her that lost them in the first place; not that you should infer that I gave a toss either way. Although as it happens I did at around that time play a modest role in the building of both the new airport at Mount Pleasant and an Iraqi naval helicopter base next to the Shatt al-Arab; sadly, and as so often, these are stories which must await another day.
Coming back to the present, and having already mentioned the current Prime Minister, here is a public service announcement on his behalf:
* Lester Piggott on Never Say Die at 33/1
** There is a surprisingly long list on Wikipedia of people whose names don't contain any capital letters. Despite including such notables as a female Tibetan singer called alan, it is shamefully devoid of wargames bloggers. The only people on the list of whom I had heard previously were e.e. cummings - who has featured on this blog more than once before - and k.d. lang, who is about to feature now:
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