Among the many elements of all the mawkish sentimentality yesterday which irritated me was the implication that the nation could somehow 'remember' something that, for the overwhelming majority of us, happened before we were born. I'm old enough to be retired and even so my late parents were too young to have played any active part in the second world war. It's history, and we should treat it as such; in other words we should try to learn something from it rather than just dress up and pretend. Others have of course written better than me on both V.E. Day and the grotesque English capacity for self delusion; here and here are good places to start, but I'm sure you will find many others worth reading.
Anyway, in the spirit of proper historical investigation and to remind us what the world was actually like seventy five years ago, I have dug out some very rare archive footage of Baby Vera, Ginger Vera and Posh Vera entertaining our boys.
Two interesting articles. I disagree with Mr English on two points. He says that England/Britain engaged in a series of wars with European countries as if we were the only one doing it. He then says we haven’t won a recent war without being in some sort of alliance. I can’t think of ANY war when we have beaten a significant foe without being part of a coalition (‘natives armed with fruit’ to coin Blackadder don’t count).
ReplyDeleteBen Jennings cartoon in this weekend's 'i' newspaper gets the hypocrisy of it all wbout right : https://twitter.com/BJennings90/status/1258808334859284487/photo/
ReplyDeletethat is, 'about right' :)
DeleteIndeed. Sir Kier Starmer made a similar point in an article for the Telegraph of all papers over the weekend.
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