Favourite dates

To the Carlton Club for an oversubscribed dinner moderated by Michael Binyon with Liam Fox and yours truly speaking about the Middle East. When my turn came I shyly pointed out that I was honoured to be invited because the usual subject I’m asked to discuss is Paris Hilton or jail. ‘Why don’t you do just that?’ yelled someone from the audience.

Oh well, not everyone is as polite as Sergei Cristo, the big shot at the club who had the temerity to invite me. Unsurprisingly, the Middle East seems to be on everyone’s mind nowadays, everyone except Paris Hilton’s, that is. I suppose 2001 will go down as a footnote in history because of the Twin Towers disaster, just as 2003 will be remembered as the year Uncle Sam launched his worst thought-out invasion ever. There are years which are momentous in historical importance and others that are less so. Depending on whose side you’re on, 1948 was anathema to Muslims, as Israel was created, although 1917 was hardly better, what with the fall of the Tsar and the Balfour Declaration. As a wise man pointed out in the Sunday Telegraph, all these dates rubbed the Muslims up the wrong way, but it seems to me that everything we do rubs them up the wrong way, even when our girls take their clothes off and sway to the music of rock. (If you call that swaying.)

No, my favourite dates differ from those of Mohammed or Hassan. I like 732, as in Charles Martel in Tours; 1683, as in Jan Sobieski in Vienna; and, the best of all because it took place in my backyard, 1571, as in Don John and the Battle of Lepanto. Of all the battles, this was the one that saved the Christian West.