What the Marxist Tariq Ali gets wrong about Winston Churchill spectator.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from spectator.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The story of Alphonse Steinès night on the Tourmalet and the telegram he subsequently sent to Henri Desgrange has gone down in legend. Remarkably, there was no telegram, and much of what is said about Steinès’s night on the mountain is a fiction.