Category: History

The Zimmermann Telegram

An article in The Spectator last week by Sinclair McKay sent me to a bookcase to pull this out. His piece was about Old Etonian, Nigel de Grey, who decoded the Zimmermann Telegram in 1917 with a Presbyterian pastor, the Rev William Montgomery. 

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Taking a Long View

Happy new year from a wet, windswept London. It’s a time of resolutions and prognostications for 2017 in the media but here at Blog Bellew HQ we take a longer perspective.

All about Aloysius

There are some unfathomable mysteries in life. One is why John Betjeman called his teddy bear Archibald Ormsby-Gore. He took Archie with him to Oxford and Archie appears in Brideshead Revisited as Sebastian Flyte’s teddy, Aloysius.

Cold War Curtain-Raiser

President Obama has ordered thirty-five Russian diplomats based in Washington to leave the country. What a feeble gesture compared to the magnificent score Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath notched up in 1971. Ninety in one innings and fifteen extras, as Sir Alec may have put it. 

The Tartar Steppe

It’s feast or famine at No. 56 and right now it’s feast. A feast of lovely books and I will share them with you as I read them. First I never got round to mentioning that I was given two books after I fell downstairs.

Suez and Brexit; Keep the Aspidistra Flying

As the Suez Crisis unfolded, as with the war we waged in Iraq, it became clear that there had been a pretty big bish. International opinion consigned Britain and France to the dog house; petrol was rationed; the Prime Minister went to recuperate at Goldeneye (Ian Fleming’s house in Jamaica). George Lyttleton expressed his feelings… Continue reading Suez and Brexit; Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Old Dog, New Tricks

New converts are always the most fervent, especially in the Catholic Church ever since St Paul saw the light. I notice this in myself.

Operation Sea Lion – Part Three

In the summer of 1940 Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff expected an airborne invasion and a seaborne one, most likely on the east coast where the beaches were flatter and the terrain likewise making it easier country for motorised troops. They thought it much less likely that there would be an invasion across the… Continue reading Operation Sea Lion – Part Three

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