by Max Hastings New York: Harper, Collins, 2020. Pp. xxxv, 380+. Illus., chron., appends., notes, biblio., index.. $30.00. ISBN: 006295363X
A Fresh Look at the “Dam Busters”
Many people have seen the classic 1955 film
The Dambusters, but probably wish Sir Peter Jackson had gone on to make his factually-corrected remake.
It turns out, however, that Sir Peter may be fortunate not to have done so yet. Because he might yet want to option Sir Max Hastings recent book, titled in Britain
Chastise: The Dambusters Story. A British friend recommended it to this reviewer recently, and I decided to get it regardless of my first thought
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Britain’s aircraft carriers have played a vital role
SIR – Sir Max Hastings never misses an opportunity to have a dig at Britain’s aircraft carriers, most recently in a report about armoured recce vehicles (December 29).
I am uncertain whether Sir Max has ever set foot on an aircraft carrier, but he will recall, as a writer about global conflict, that in the Second World War Germany, Italy and Japan could not have been defeated without the critical contribution of aircraft carriers in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, in every major amphibious landing and, in particular, in the remorseless allied fight across the Pacific.
30 December 2020 • 12:01am
Patients wait to be vaccinated at The Hive, home of Barnet Football Club, in Cannons Park, north London
Credit: kirsty o connor/pa
SIR – I was furious when I read the letter (December 28) from Dr Claire Barker, who attempted to volunteer as a Covid-19 vaccinator but was unable to supply the 21 documents demanded during the registration process.
I was further dismayed by your report yesterday that Nightingale hospitals are empty because, according to Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, “we can’t conjure staff out of thin air”.
It seems that, in the battle against Covid-19, we are witnessing the triumph of bureaucracy over desperately needed creativity.
How the Telegraph Tank warmed Sir Max Hastings s bum and carried his typewriter through the Falklands War
The Scorpion reconnaissance vehicle is still operating today in Eden Camp museum in North Yorkshire
29 December 2020 • 6:30am
Scorpion callsign 23A driving at the Eden Camp museum in Malton, North Yorkshire
Credit: Charlotte Graham
Sir Max Hastings, the former Daily Telegraph editor, is credited with being the first journalist to enter Port Stanley at the end of the Falklands War.
That he was able to get there first, ahead of energetic and equally hungry colleagues such as Robert Fox (still interviewing in the trenches today as Defence correspondent for the Evening Standard), was partly down to a Scorpion reconnaissance vehicle of the Household Cavalry.