Just in

Articles by Henry Elkins

Avatar photo
About Henry Elkins

A keen researcher of family ancestors, Henry will be reporting on the centenary of World War One. More Posts

Mers el Kebir

There was a fascinating More 4 progamme on Mers el Kebir last Saturday. Many young people must be hard-wired into Winston Churchill legend after The Darkest Hour but I suspect ignorant of a crisis that confronted him in July 1940 two months into his Premiership. France had fallen but still had a [...]

February 26, 2018 // 0 Comments

Sometimes things happen as they should

Yesterday I had one of those days of which not much is expected – I had one or two things to occupy me, viz. a phone interview to conduct, an errand to carry out, an article to complete and three phone calls to make – and initially things didn’t quite happen as they should but then, from the [...]

February 15, 2018 // 0 Comments

Not quite as we remember them?

Every scruffy schoolboy and his catapult knows of Henry Ford’s famous dictum “History is bunk” but arguably it is the kind of glib dismissal put about only by those whose abilities and/or interests lie in other subjects. Although mankind and science are in a constant state of [...]

January 18, 2018 // 0 Comments

Not nearly as good as the advance media verdicts would have it

Being an admirer of Winston Churchill – for all his faults, regarded by some who should know enough to judge these things as one of the all-time greatest Englishmen – and having listened to the media jungle drums over the past month or two, I had made a decision earlier this week to break the [...]

January 14, 2018 // 0 Comments

Two for the price of one

Today the world mourns two of its unlikely icons – overnight the deaths were announced of Christine Keeler, the girl at the centre of the infamous 1960s British sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair, and the legendary French ‘bad boy’ pop idol Johnny Hallyday at the ages of 75 and 74 [...]

December 6, 2017 // 0 Comments

Munich/Robert Harris

Munich by Robert Harris is one of those readable novels you can devour in one go. This perhaps surprising as we all know what happened in Munich in 1938. The main story is of  the collusion between Hugh Legat, an aspiring diplomat in the Foreign Office, and his friend at Oxford Paul von Hartmann, [...]

November 23, 2017 // 0 Comments

He may have said something interesting, but …

It was my lot yesterday to travel into central London in order to attend the annual lunch of an esteemed organisation with friends in high places. The venue was ancient, sophisticated and impressive and the lunch excellent in both quality and service for such a number. Many of those attending, all [...]

November 16, 2017 // 0 Comments

Over to you, God

It is a plan fact of life that, via nature or nurture, some people are just designed to irritate others. Here’s my story for today. Deep in my past I, partly because of my legal training, at one stage in my life I became involved in taking the minutes of board and other important meetings. [...]

October 27, 2017 // 0 Comments

Oh What a Lovely War

I am often asked how and why my interest in World War One began. The first long playing record I bought was the Joan Littlewood production  of Oh What A Lovely War in 1964. Yesterday in the car I listened to the whole of it. It starred two actors who are hardly known these days but huge talents: [...]

October 7, 2017 // 0 Comments

Pretending they were there

From time to time those of us who live relatively straightforward and uncomplicated lives come across media stories that seem to come from another (alien) world altogether. It’s one in which con artists, fraudsters, fantasists and Walter Mitty-types ‘live out’ lifestyle scenarios [...]

August 23, 2017 // 0 Comments

1 … 10 11 12 13 14 … 19

Copyright © 2026 The National Rust | Design by Premonition