In praise of Mussolini

One tends to do a lot of reading on board a boat while sailing far from the madding yobs. Mostly books, thank God, as newspapers are hard to find until they’re ready to wrap fish. The Spectator, of course, is sent to wherever I am by my nice personal assistant, who buys it first thing Thursday morning and has it delivered by special messenger to the nearest marina. When times are good it comes even faster, with sweet young London things doing the delivering.

Last week I read David Gilmour’s review of The Force of Destiny, by Christopher Duggan, and a very interesting review it was of a book I hope to buy soon. Except for one thing. Gilmour links us Greeks with the Ethiopians in both having defeated the Italians. Well, for one thing the Ethiopians did not. We, however, kicked the hell out of the Italians in the Albanian campaign and broke their spirit to such an extent that they were useless for the rest of the war. The reviewer then throws the pasta crowd a crumb by mentioning that they took Corfu. One of our subs, the Papanikolis, sank three enemy vessels in one day off Corfu, while our small army was advancing into Italian-held Albania. In view of the fact that we have so many, islands were expendable back then.

Never mind. Greece was the only European country fighting alongside Britain in October 1940, and the only one to give a good account of itself, but you wouldn’t know it from the coverage we usually get — especially in sport — from British hacks. Cyprus, needless to say, took care of the Anglo–Greek love affair, and sensitive Hellenes have been feeling slighted by British writers ever since.