HAPPY D-DAY, EVERYONE !

OK, Spendius: we got it!
U prefer the school of thought
that Neville Chamberlain brought to
the Munich negotiations, in consequence whereof
he achieved "Peace in Our Time." From that, I dissent.

I approve of Churchill 's vu of the situation. (He was 1/2 American.)





David

By birth, maybe, but he managed to overcome that severe handicap. This is one of the reasons we admire him. (Didn't you know that?)

I 'm trying to provoke Spendius.

We do. But people who kill others in self defence are required to justify their actions with something more than assertions with the only witness dead.

The same in the US I presume allowing for different juries.

What point were you trying to make Dave although I do realise you hadn't actually committed yourself.

From now on you can be sure. So you needn't bother with such simple smears any more.

Mr. Chamberlain represented the view of the British Government at the time and in the circumstances. So did Mr. Churchill at a later date.

Nobody with any sense gives a **** whether you dissent. You're trying to hold momentous and tragic events in the palm of your hand.

He wasn't raised American, he didn't have an American accent.

Here's a heart warming story that's actually got something to do with D Day.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-27735086

Churchill not only was not raised as an American, he was given a classic upper class upbringing of the late 19th century. His uncle, his father's eldest brother, was the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and Winston (named for the father of the first Duke of Marlborough) was raised at Blenheim Palace and other family estates. He had a nanny (whom he dearly loved). He was educated at St. George's, Ascot, and Harrow. His father, who was very censorious and harsh with him, told him he despaired of sending him to university, so he got him a place at Sandhurst (The Royal Military College). In a way, that was the making of him in his public career. He served on the frontier in India, in the Malakand district, which leads to the Khyber Pass. Returning from India, he wrote a book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, and that would set a pattern for him. His father died in 1895, and in 1896, although he didn't intend to make the army his career, he finagled a transfer to Kitchener's army and went to Sudan, where he took part in the last British cavalry charge in open battle. He wrote a book about that, too, The River War. When he returned to England, he squired his mother about in society, and as the widow of a prominent politician and scion of a ducal family, she had an entrée to the highest ranking and most exclusive circles. After going to South Africa at the time of the Boer War, helping to defend a train and being captured, he managed to escape his Boer captors and slip across South Africa to Mozambique. I can think of no one whose early life was less like that of a privileged American, nor more like that of a character in a Rider Haggard novel.

[quote="Setanta I can think of no one whose early life was less like that of a privileged American, nor more like that of a character in a Rider Haggard novel.
[/quote]

Just the highlighted bit applies.

What about Richard Burton?

One of my favourite figures of that era. He was asked to investigate the male brothels in Karachi and his report makes entertaining reading. Some people say that George MacDonald Fraser's re-imagined Flashman was inspired by him.

He's one of the central figures, if not the central figure in Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld novels, which brought him to my attention at the tender age of 17.

Richard Francis Burton was not a member of the highest levels of society, but certainly he was not an American (he was of Irish and French descent if i recall correctly), so he is not an exception to what i wrote about Churchill.

Burton was also the very type of a character in a Rider Haggard novel; Speake was a sneaking, lying weasel. The one great tragedy of Burton's life came after his death, when his wife, a typical Victorian prude, burned all of his papers. Burton gave the English-speaking world The Thousand Nights and the One Night. It had previously been translated (badly, according to Burton) into French, but was still largely unknown to the English-speaking world. Much of the Farsi and Arabic literature which he had translated had never been published in his lifetime, and his bitch of a bluenose wife made sure it wouldn't be published after his death.

I read an excellent biography of Burton, but that was more than 20 years ago, and, alas, i cannot recommend it as i don't remember the exact title or the author.

Among Burton's adventures:

As was the case with Churchill, he first served in the Malakand district, about 50 years earlier. He passed himself off as a Pathan (they call them Pashtuns now), and travelled deep into the Khyber pass, and the Waziristan district of eastern Afghanistan. He was able to do so by spending as much time as possible in the sun as nearly naked as possible--his grey eyes were not different from what was common among the Pathans. He knew the practices of Muslim men well enough to pull that off, and he was a great natural linguistic. It appears he was never suspected.

Either before of after (i don't recall which) his expeditions to find the source of the Nile, he made the Hajj. He passed himself off as a Bosnian Muslim. I doubt that anyone in Egypt or Arabia spoke Serbo-Croatian, but his great natural abilities with languages would probably have done him the service if he had needed it. Upon returning to Egypt, he did something which revealed him to his guide as not being a true Muslim (i don't recall what it was), and he managed to elude a mob bent on killing him. He had thought to be the first westerner to complete the Hajj, but he learned on returning to England that a German gentleman had done it several years earlier.

Whether before or after the Hajj, he and John Speke formed an expedition to find the source of the Nile. Just outside Mogadishu, they were set upon by bandits. The Somali bearers they had hired bolted, and Speke along with them. Both Burton and Speke were wounded by spears, but Speke made good his escape. Burton was captured, and his arms were pinioned around a spear shaft behind his back, with his hands tied in front of him. His feet were also bound, but in the night, using his toes and heels, he managed to shed those bindings, and in the early light of dawn, he ran for Mogadishu. He was again wounded, but outran his pursuers. The whole thing was probably a set-up from the beginning. He and Speke were evacuated to Aden, and, interestingly, the doctor there wrote that Burton was suffering from secondary stage syphilis. Apparently, the prolonged high fevers he suffered in Africa killed off the spirochetes in his body, as he never developed tertiary syphilis. (Randolph Churchill, Winston's father, died of tertiary syphilis. His wife never contracted the disease because it is not contagious in the secondary stage.)

Burton and Speke organized another expedition and this time reached the neighborhood of Lake Victoria. Burton, who had suffered constant fevers, was laid low with the worst fever yet, so Speke proceeded onward with their guides and some of the bearers. He did not actually reach Lake Victoria, but he came close enough to find it again, and when he returned to camp, he told Burton he had found nothing. Speke later returned and claimed credit for discovering the source of the Nile. After Burton's recovery from his fever, they could easily have marched to Lake Victoria in a few days, but Speke had other plans.

Burton also visited a sacred Muslim city in Abyssinia which was said to never have been visited by a European, but i don't recall the details.

Burton's greatest gift to his world was in his translations of Farsi and Arabic legends and tales. As i already mentioned, most of his work was burned by his wife after his death.

Harar, I fancy.

I was thinking so, but i didn't want to say it without knowing for certain.

Yes; I remember.





David