Gallipoli
Why was the British army so ill-prepared to fight the second world war?
After 1918, the general staff ceased to focus on who they might have to fight next and how, leading to the abysmal performance of the army in Norway and France in 1940
Aussie rules
The One Day In the Year is an Australian drama about the annual commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.…
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat
Lord Woolton put it best: ‘Few people have succeeded in obtaining such a public demand for their promotion as the…
Wars on drugs
‘Of all civilisation’s occupational categories, that of soldier may be the most conducive to regular drug use.’ The problem with…
The secret brilliance of Prince Philip’s ‘gaffes’
I’ve just been on the receiving end of a Prince Philip gaffe, of sorts, and I loved it. It was…
The sick man of Europe finally succumbs
In a possibly apocryphal story, Henry Kissinger, while visiting Beijing in 1972 as Nixon’s national security adviser, asked Zhou Enlai,…
Aussie rules
Some years ago I paid a visit to the site of the Gallipoli landings because I was mildly obsessed with…
Evil under the sun
Peter Parker discerns classical allusion amid the horror in two books commemorating the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign
Back-stabbing the old warrior
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
The Spectator’s Notes
Last week, David Cameron said that we have ‘seven months to save the most extraordinary country in history’. He meant…
