Ww1

Prince Philip has died at the age of 99. Writing in 2015, Harry Mount reflected on the Duke of Edinburgh’s personable style and sense of public service. I’ve just been on the receiving end of a Prince Philip gaffe, of sorts, and I loved it. It was at a lunch last week at the Cavalry and Guards Club for the Gallipoli Association — the charity that commemorates victims and veterans of that tragic, doomed campaign. For 40 years, the Duke of Edinburgh has been the association’s patron. And so, in Gallipoli’s centenary year, he came to the association’s lunch. Before lunch, he roamed at will around the cavernous drawing room, chatting

From ‘W.G.’, The Spectator, 30 October 1915: The late Dr. W.G. Grace had become in his lifetime a legend, and he is likely to remain a legend as long as Englishmen play games. Never was such a cricketer; and it is almost safe to say that there will never be such a cricketer again, for the perfection of pitches and the high organisation of the game have left less scope than there used to be for a man to achieve so great a mastery over his fellows. In this respect cricket is like war; in first-class cricket, as in war among first-class Powers, there is the same human material for personal ascendancy,

From News of the Week, The Spectator, 19 December 1914: A SMALL squadron of German cruisers made an attack on Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough on Wednesday morning. It seems that the squadron consisted of at least three battle cruisers and two armoured cruisers. Hartlepool and Scarborough were shelled simultaneously for about half an hour shortly after eight o’clock. The bombardment of Whitby began at nine o’clock, and it is possible that one or more of the ships which took part in it had come from Scarborough, which is only fifteen miles distant. As soon as the presence of the German ships was reported a British patrolling squadron tried to cut

From The Spare Bedroom, The Spectator, 12 December 1914: OUR national individuality has been threatened, with the result that all English institutions are at this moment specially dear to the Englishman. We are prepared to defend them from first to last—from the system of government to the spare bedroom. Indeed, though we may jestingly call the spare bedroom the least among our typically English institutions, it counts for a good deal in our national life. It has been instrumental in the development of the middle-class Englishman, and be, after all, is the typical Englishman. Among the bourgeoisies of Europe the English- man alone can have a friend to stay. He

From The New German Artillery, The Spectator, 12 December 1914: We shall have to wait a long time, we surmise, till the merits or demerits of the various new weapons are proved.Perhaps before judgment is delivered other new weapons will be introduced. The data are still very imperfect. We cannot say yet, for instance, whether the old-fashioned grenade will enjoy a revival in future wars owing to the fact that the out- flanking of one huge conscript array by another similar army is in many circumstances impossible. and that therefore the trenches of the two armies approach within a few yards of one another on a parallel front. At this

From News of the Week, The Spectator, 12 December 1914: An incident connected with the naval action off the Falkland Islands which has touched us deeply, and which we are sure will touch the whole of our countrymen, has been the chorus of delight—no other phrase will do—with which the victory has been received in America. Blood may be thicker than water, but salt water and blood mixed, where the English-speaking race is concerned, carry all before them. Though the Americans on the business side of their beads are rightly determined to maintain a strict neutrality, that neutrality cannot resist the strain of a sea fight. There is something in that